Language and Identity in the Israel-Palestine Conflict: The Politics of Self-Perception in the Middle East 9780755611584, 9781848858190

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ACK NOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my interviewees for their openness and their gracious response when I contacted them for interviews. Without them and without their general dedication to human rights this book would have not been written. I extend my thanks to Nomika Zion, Keren Perez, Rachel Rokach, Beate Zilversmidt, Sara Kliachko, Leah Shakdeil, Hannah and Abraham Yakin, Yihudit Har’el Reema Shweiki, Rula Hamed. Many people, in addition, were part of this book, through their companionship and patience with me when I was discussing ideas for it. Special thanks are due to my colleagues at Bryn Mawr College. My friend Barbara Hicks patiently went through some of the early ideas for the book. To her I owe an understanding of American society which transcends my personal difficulties in Oklahoma, as a Palestinian living there right after September 11, 2001. I am grateful to Father Solomon Sara at Georgetown University, first for his friendship, and second for his mentorship and his trust in my ability to write. He never doubted me, even when I had doubts about myself. I also thank Colleen Cotter at Georgetown University and Queen’s College in London for her unconditional support. Special thanks to Father Daniel C. O’Connell for his support for what he saw as an unrelenting commitment to peace and human dignity since the moment I met him at Georgetown. At the Hebrew University I would like to thank my friends Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Zohar Kampf, Zvi Bekerman and Ifat Maoz; at Haifa

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University I thank Tamar Katriel; and at Ben-Gurion University my thanks go to Dov Shinar, whose unconditional support is always welcome, Dan Caspi, Mike Dahan and Hanna Raz. I would also like to thank the Hebrew University for a postdoctorate award, as well as a grant from the Smart Institute, and the Truman Institute for an invitation to a conference on dialogue. I thank the Israeli Council for Higher Education for a MAOF scholarship, but, above all, I thank the wonderful students at both universities for their eagerness to connect as human beings during the early days of the al-Aqsa Intifada. To all of those people, I owe the book. They gave me a valuable perspective on what’s going on. They gave me the human face, separate from government policies, a human face of a basic desire to live, love and be loved by others. I would like to thank the University of Oklahoma for small research grants which enabled me to carry out this project. Special thanks to Leah Reches, Robert Griswold, Mary Jane Schneider, Candessa Morgan, Joseph Ginat and Dragan Milivojevic. I thank Anahita Abdeshahian for her meticulous transcribing and help with the data. I would also like to thank my students at both the University of Oklahoma and at Florida International University in Miami, for their eagerness to learn, and for their curious and active minds. I thank the Jack D. Gordon Institute at Florida International University. I thank Maria Marsh at I.B.Tauris for her patience with the manuscript as well as Sophie Richmond, the copy editor for her meticulous work. Without my children Aman and Robert Sari, whose laughter fills my heart with joy, I could not have written this book; and my thanks go to my husband Russell Lucas for his unconditional love and support. My life with Russell has taught me that peace with dignity is doable. He always jokes that if I can tolerate Thanksgiving with his Jewish side of the family, and in fact enjoy myself, then there is hope in the world. I also wish to thank my parents, whose own lives simply demonstrated to me what it means to preserve human compassion when all odds are against you. I thank my siblings Ghada, Khalil and Nagham for their unconditional trust in me.

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1 INTRODUCTION

This book portrays images of the lives and struggles of Palestinian and Israeli peace activists through formal interviews I conducted with activists on both sides during the summers of 2005 and 2006. Much has changed since then. And according to the accounts of many observers, the situation worsened. Nonetheless, my intention is to draw a picture of the conflict that is more complex than is presented in the media. The stories of the lives of these people emerge as a constant effort to seek and preserve human life and dignity regardless of the national divide. These activists are united in this pursuit to testify that what unites us as humans is more than what divides us through conflict. This book is driven by hope in spite of what has been going on. I had the privilege of co-teaching a class on ‘The Question of Palestine’ with a colleague from Serbia at a university in Oklahoma during the spring of 2006. The class was offered after a number of students went to a head of the program and asked for the class to be taught. There had never before been a class on the question of Palestine offered at the university. The location, Oklahoma, is too close to the painful experience of the ethnic cleansing of the native population of the USA. Oklahoma is the ‘memory for forgetfulness’ (to cite Mahmoud Darwish) of what happened to the Native Americans. The students were wonderful and the class was a success, even though controversy had been predicted. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much the students interacted with each other and the material under study. What engaged, but at the same time enraged, my students the

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most was the fact that ‘mistreatment’ of Palestinians (to be euphemistic) was still going on, and in broad daylight under the blazing sun of the world’s media. In addition, the students were intimidated by how much they didn’t know, in spite of how much exposure the topic receives in the media. The success of the class was perhaps the reason why it was never offered again. I have lived in the USA, with intermittent returns to the Middle East, since 1994. When Americans ask where I am from and I say ‘Palestine,’ the response varies from silence, to just plain ‘oh’ and then silence, to a question of what part of Palestine ‘West Bank’ or ‘Gaza’ followed by my ‘none,’ and then an awkward bewildered silence from the part of my interlocutor, to an insistence on ‘You mean Israel?’ I had a friend who was actually trying to give the good advice that I should just say ‘Israel, you know, people here do not like to hear the word Palestine.’ Or if I choose to say I am from Nazareth (or Jerusalem), the next reaction is usually ‘You’re Jewish?’ Upon my arrival at a Florida university a colleague asked me whether I minded meeting a senior member of the department ‘because he is Israeli.’ She followed her request with, ‘I hope this is alright with you,’ which left me defenseless, deeply misunderstood and sad. I find that the American people are, generally speaking, fair-minded. When it comes to the question of Palestine, however, puzzlingly their defenses are often high. I hope by writing this book to shatter some of the conceptions or misconceptions about the conflict, but at the same time to resolve for myself the mystery of the relative misunderstanding of the Palestinians in the USA. A second reason for writing this book is that I wish to make a contribution towards resolution, no matter how minor or trivial it is. It is my tribute to the activists on both sides, and my humble appreciation for their dedication and their work. My writing is haunted by images of a past that is not too far distant, a past I was not present at, but a recent past nonetheless. I am thinking in particular of my mother and of a Jewish friend I have who are roughly the same age. In the year 1939, my mother was one month old; her father, who was active in the Arab revolt in Palestine (1936–9) lost his life on Allenby Street in Haifa. My grandmother, shocked and frightened of revenge attacks by Jewish groups, that same night left Haifa with her three

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young children to return to her family in Nazareth. Around that same time, my dear friend was on board a ship traveling from Romania to Palestine. She was probably confused, scared and full of anticipation as she followed her parents’ dream of a better life away from European racism and harassment. As a child uprooted from Romania, what did my friend think of changing her name, her language and her habits? What went on inside her mind? What went on in my mother’s mind as a child, deprived of her father, growing up in a town which, nine years later, capitulated to the newly emerging Jewish state without any resistance? I will never know, and these questions will haunt me until I die. What I know for certain is that my mother went on to college, the first Arab college in the state of Israel, and studied to become a teacher. She taught elementary school for three decades and she loved her job. She silently and perhaps unselfconsciously was helping her community rehabilitate after the trauma of 1948. Her only unfulfilled dream was to get higher degrees, which was impossible at the time for an Israeli Arab in the state of Israel – not because she was a woman, but because she was Arab. But she saw her dream come true through me. My friend, on the other hand, with the confidence of a supportive state and institutions, became a professor at the Hebrew University – a very unique and distinguished professor indeed. It is my mother’s and my friend’s parallel lives, with their unspoken experience and resilience, although under different but interrelated circumstances, which have shaped my thinking about the conflict in many ways. Both experiences are too close, even if we don’t like to admit that to ourselves. I remember that, in 2001, when I was a post-doctoral researcher, an explosion shocked the Hebrew University campus and killed a number of people. Immediately afterwards, my friend gathered her graduate students and continued with her class as usual. That incident reminded me of my mother’s extreme stubbornness and steadfastness in the face of extreme circumstances. The will to live is extraordinary for both my mother and my friend. The only time I saw my mother on the verge of breaking was when Saddam Hussein was sending missiles into Israel during the first Gulf War. Hearing political rhetoric against the Arabs, she relived the 1948 trauma. She packed the necessities for each

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one of us to take if forced to leave. Her fear was exaggerated. But, on the other hand, her fear was not unsubstantiated, considering that the issue of the transfer of the remaining Arabs is discussed continually in the Knesset and in the media. I write this book for my mother and for my friend, as both were victims of a colonial chain reaction which started in Europe – but with the Jewish minority in Europe and the native Palestinians dealing with its consequences. The story of this book in many ways is the story of Palestine, the personal accounts of peace activists on both sides of the national divide interlaced with my own personal analysis. Overall, I interviewed formally about 20 people from both sides. I used the transcripts of 12 of these interviews (I chose the ones with the best recording qualities). I have informally interviewed and had conversations with many more. The book is also informed by my experience of being a Palestinian from Nazareth, who studied in Israeli institutions before going to the USA, and who, upon returning to the country during the difficult years of 2000 to 2002, taught at the Hebrew University while on a post-doctoral fellowship, and held a position at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. It is these valuable experiences which shaped the ideas of this book. Last, at an early presentation of this book at Florida International University in Miami, some people commented that the book may not give a full perspective because it does not address Palestinian terrorism per se. My answer to this is that Palestinians do not have a monopoly over terrorism or any other form of extremism. I excluded direct discussions of extremism on both sides of the equation for three main reasons. First, people who seek peace and a stop to bloodshed are not a minority on both sides, nor are they marginal to their communities. Second, I wish to shatter stereotypes about Palestinians. To see a discussion of Palestinian society as incomplete because it does not include terrorism is a very reductionist view of Palestinian society and its complexity. Palestinians have been abused, but that does not strip them of their humanity, nor should it make them abnormal. They have dreams, hopes, aspirations and feelings like any other member of the human race. The students who raised that question are engaged in a prevalent discourse in places like the USA which simply abnormalizes the

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Palestinian and her/his psyche. In other words, the act of ‘Othering’ the Palestinian is an act in which American society by and large is engaged for many reasons (historic, religious, political, etc.). Third, I wanted to enter into dialogue with those people on both sides who have spent a lifetime engaging with each other in order to arrive at a humanistic solution to the conflict. It is not difficult to interview people who hold extreme views about each other and show how they do that through their language. Their views are out there and they do not attempt to conceal them. However, choosing moderate people with convictions about the necessity for peace may demonstrate more subtle points about the similarities and differences between Palestinians and Israelis on issues which pertain to the conceptualization of the conflict as well as on visions for resolving it. For me it is more challenging as a research project to investigate their worldview than more extreme views. I am interested in their naturalized worldviews, in what seem to be facts of life. But, at the same time, my informants have shown a high level of self-reflexivity. Their answers generally demonstrated that they had to think intensely about different issues pertaining to the conflict, and that they have been engaged in taking on the ‘other’s’ perspective. I am optimistic that the conflict will be resolved, there will be a future without bloodshed. My position does not arise out of naiveté regarding the political conditions of the conflict and of the forces which keep it alive. To the contrary, I am well aware of all that; however, my optimism is a political statement. If we all engage in hate, then there is not much to use to pull ourselves away from the edge of the abyss which both peoples are close to falling into. The book will proceed as follows: Chapter 2 outlines the historical events which led to the conflict. The history of the conflict is divided into four time periods: (1) the late Ottoman period until World War I, (2) the British Mandate to 1948 – the year the state of Israel was established, (3) from 1948 until 1987 – the year the first Palestinian intifada started, and (4) from 1987 until today. Chapter 3 discusses who the interviewees are and how I interviewed them. I chose interviews of six female and six male activists. Of the twelve: six are Israeli Jews, three are Palestinians from Ramallah and Jerusalem, and three Palestinians

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from Israel who hold Israeli citizenship. Chapter 4 explains the theoretical framework which drives the book – namely, the relationship between discourse, identity and perspectivity. It takes into consideration that identity is socially constructed through power relations in and among societies. Meaning in language is always perspectivized, which means that it is always the individual’s psychological expression of a collectively constructed understanding of social life. Sense-making is an ongoing process, never finalized, and always brought out through dialogue. Chapter 5 is the first chapter which refers directly to the interviews. It discusses the physical-national boundary-setting between the two groups through discourse. Palestine as a space emerges out of these interviews as metaphorically more complex for the Palestinians than for the Israelis. Chapter 6 presents the interviewees’ visions of peace. To the activists, words such as ‘justice,’ ‘dignity’ and ‘equality’ emerge as ingredients for peace. They also discuss more concrete and practical suggestions for achieving peace, such as drawing the (physical) borders for two states. Chapter 7, as a prelude to chapter 8, is a brief theoretical introduction of the gendered nature of activism among both groups, as well as a short account of the historic phases of women’s activism for both the Palestinians and the Israelis. Chapter 8 discusses the tension between nationalism and feminism for both the Palestinian and the Israeli activists. It seems that the question of the compatibility between the national project (for both groups) and feminist demands concerns women from both groups more than men. However, men also gave accounts of how it is harder sometimes to work for peace since both societies tie militarism and nationalism to masculinity and peace to femininity. Chapter 9 outlines the activists’ visions of a resolution to the conflict. Activists on both sides emphasized the pursuit for human dignity for all parties involved in the conflict. Chapter 10 concludes with a call for more understanding of each other on both sides. What emerges from my interviews is a concern for human rights which transcends national as well as gender boundaries. This shared vision is what I hope will lead both groups in the future to come closer together in ending the conflict.

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2 A NOTE ON THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE

Palestine (Filistin/Falastin in Arabic, and at times Eretz Yisrael in Hebrew) is the sliver of land, roughly 10,500 square miles (27,000 square kilometers) between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and is a crossroads between Asia and Africa. It is a land of ancient civilizations and peoples: the Philistines, the Canaanites, the Jews, the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, Romans and Persians, and the Arabs. Ancient cities of Palestine include: Acre, Haifa, Yaffa, Asqalan, Gaza, Hebron, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nablus, Lydda, Ramlah, Nazareth, Tabariyya and Jericho. It is sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, with Jerusalem at the center of three faiths; and in more recent times the country is also associated with the Baha’i faith (see Smith, 2004; Suleiman, 2008). With the birth of Islam in the seventh century, Palestine became primarily Arab and (Sunni) Muslim with Arabic as the main language. It was administered from Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo as part of a succession of Islamic empires. The Ottoman Empire ruled the province from Istanbul from 1516 to 1918. In that historical perspective, the ‘question of Palestine’ is only about a century old. Nonetheless, it is one of the most lasting conflicts of modern times. The modern history of Palestine can be divided into four time periods: (1) the late Ottoman period until World War I, (2) the British Mandate to 1948 – the year the state of Israel was established, (3) from 1948 until 1987 – the year the first Palestinian intifada

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started, and (4) from 1987 until today. Generally, authors mark the end of the third phase with 1967, the year Israel took control of the entire area of the mandate for Palestine. Instead, I choose the year 1987, which marks the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada against Israel. This year marks clearly the conflict as the beginning of a Palestinian conflict, rather than being solely defined as a regional Arab conflict with Israel. I first opened my eyes to the world in one of the most special and most beautiful and most melancholy places on earth. I was born in Nazareth. The beauty of Nazareth compelled me since I knew myself. It compelled me with its deep blue skies, and with its reddish hills that surround and blend with the reddish-brick old and spacious houses around the souq. However, when I was born, my family had moved from the souq to a piece of land east of the Catholic Annunciation church, where my ancestors had built a house sometime in the eighteenth century in the middle of an orchard. Our house was new and close to the old ancestral house where my paternal grandparents lived. What did I know of my existence, and of the tragic circumstances of the people I was born into? I knew nothing. And it was going to take me a while until I could grasp the enormity of the circumstances and of the tragedy of Palestine. As mentioned earlier, the question of Palestine is a little more than a century old, thus making it one of the most lasting conflicts of our modern times. Why is that? Is it really an intractable situation? Is it a clash of civilizations, as some respectable scholars would like us to think? Or is it yet another story of colonialism, a disruption of an old life and rhythm and the emergence of new realities for the indigenous people that at the beginning were not of their making. I tend to believe the latter. In this brief account of the history of the question of Palestine I am inspired by the work of two great historians, Albert Hourani and Ilan Pappé, who both see history, any history, as an incomplete account. I offer an account, an interpretation or a narrative, a perspective that, it is hoped, will aid the reader in understanding the lives of the women and men under study here, and to come to terms with the fact that no account is a complete account. However, I will offer an account interlaced with my family’s personal history,

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showing how the particularity of the experience of the conflict of my family has shaped my own perspective on the conflict. Avi Shlaim (1995: 4) reminds us that: The involvement of greater powers is not a unique feature of the Middle East but one that affects, in varying degrees, all regions of the world. What distinguishes the Middle East is the intensity, pervasiveness, and profound impact of this involvement. No other part of the non-Western world has been so thoroughly and ceaselessly caught up in great-power politics. Shlaim states that we should not consider Middle East leaderships as passive recipients of colonial dictates. To the contrary, Middle East politics shows that the people have interacted with foreign intervention in many innovative and creative ways and tried to get the most out of these situations (1995: 5). I will start with the first stage of the conflict, or the stage of no conflict.

The late Ottoman period From the year 1517 until World War I, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. In late Ottoman times, it was administratively divided into three provinces; Acre (the north), Nablus (the center) and Jerusalem (the south), with both the Acre and Nablus Sanjaks belonging to the larger province (wilaya/vilayet) of Beirut and the Jerusalem Mutasarifiyya having a special status, reporting directly to Istanbul. As a result, it has been often argued that Palestinian identity did not take its distinctive shape until it encountered Zionism. Rashid Khalidi (1997), in an exhaustive account, demonstrates how Palestinians had a sense of ‘Palestinianness’ long before the encounter with Zionism, in a similar manner to the rest of the population of the Ottoman Arab provinces (see also Armstrong, 1996; Pappé, 2004). In addition, during this time of European imperialism, two main factors drove Ottoman policy: the British occupation of Egypt in 1882 and Ottoman indebtedness to foreign banks. Ottoman Palestine, like any other Arab Ottoman territory, was affected by the Ottoman

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reforms (Tanzimat), which were launched at the beginning of the nineteenth century and which attempted to modernize the empire and catch up with the global economy (Maoz, 1968). One of the ways to do that was to reorganize the administration of the empire and to centralize it. This caused the urban elites in the Arab provinces to gain more administrative power locally and also to gain representation in the parliament in Istanbul (Khalidi, 1997). This period also witnessed a growing European economic interest in the Ottoman Arab provinces. Palestine’s economy began to center around the growth of cash crops and trade with Europe, and a new middle class emerged to compete with the urban elites for power and leadership (Pappé, 2004). The port of Jaffa became important followed later by the port of Haifa and the cities of Jaffa and Haifa grew in wealth and influence. Both cities competed with the older administrative urban centers of Jerusalem, Nablus and Acre. In addition, and as the result of the Tanzimat and European missionary schools, a more European-oriented educational system emerged alongside with the traditional system. This helped in the spread of more European ideas of nationalism, and of European ways of life, side by side with ideas of Ottomanism (Khalidi, 1997; Hourani 2002). In addition, the politics of Palestine at that particular historic moment, like the rest of the Middle East, became the politics of the urban notables (Hourani, 2002 [1991]). This by itself opened the door to regional and family competition. As a result, the competition among the notables of Jerusalem, for example, continued to the point where, in the later struggle with the Zionist movement, they still worked against each other instead of paying attention to the national interests of all Palestinians (Rogan and Shlaim, 2001). On the other hand, the emergence of the Young Turks, who pressed for a turkification of the empire after 1908, started to worry the Arab notables. Yet they were not yet ready to sever contacts with the empire. They still expressed loyalty to the old regime, and preferred it to any other alternatives. In the meantime, in Europe, totally unrelated to what was going on in Palestine, European Jewish ideas were taking shape with regard to self-identity. Some European Jews preferred assimilation into European societies, or isolation in their own communities in Europe (for example,

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the stories of the writer Shalom Aleichem [1859–1916] give a vivid picture of the life of ordinary Jewish people in the Russian Empire). Another option was emigration to the Americas, or a return to Palestine, in other words, Zionism (Smith, 2004). The Zionist leadership emerged at the Basel conference in 1897, where Theodor Herzl famously stated that Palestine was ‘a land without people, for a people without a land.’ This statement can only make sense and have a truth value if we interpret it as a disregard of the local inhabitants as occupants of that particular space, as was the case in many colonial settings at the time. In this perspective, the presence of the inhabitants of Palestine was part of the landscape and the flora and fauna of that particular space, and not as a community worthy of self-determination (Pappé, 2004).

The British mandate When the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of Germany and Austria, Britain decided by all means to defeat the Central Powers, even if that meant making contradictory promises to be sorted out after the war. The British Empire was at the height of its power at the time. The Palestinian poet Salma Khadra Jayyusi reflected on that moment of the height of the British Empire in her 1960 poem ‘Without Roots’: O Britain, do not overdo it Do not say: ‘Conquest is beautiful,’ Nights will come to you Whose lights are shining spears O Britain? Those who died are dead. Lie down O spears. (Jayyusi, 1976: 150) Britain entered into three agreements during the war which proved to be detrimental to the shape and form of the Middle East: the Hussein–McMahon correspondence, the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes–Picot Agreement. The succession of events related to these agreements has left its stamp on the borders of the contemporary Middle East states.

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A correspondence between the Ottoman governor of Mecca, Sharif Hussein, and Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Cairo, led to the Arab Revolt. In the correspondence the British promised support for an Arab Revolt against the Ottomans, and a promise was made whereby, if the governor led such a revolt, he would become king over Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire after its defeat. The boundaries of his kingdom remained unspecified. And indeed, he led a revolt against the Ottomans and his son Faisal took Damascus and later announced himself king (Pappé, 2004, 2006). The Balfour Declaration is the most puzzling of the three British agreements according to Ilan Pappé (2004), but the most consequential for the future of Palestine. In this declaration, the British government promised to help the Jewish people establish a state in Palestine. The wording of the declaration is as follows: His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or in any other country. (As cited in Farsoun and Aruri, 2006: 409) One should note that the Palestinian population was not referred to as a nation or group, but rather as ‘non-Jewish communities.’ This denial of the Palestinians as constituting a national entity is similar to other colonial contexts, such as Egypt, where the Egyptians were not referred to as a nation by the British, rather as simply ‘the natives’ (Badran, 1995: 12). Note also that the Arabs – roughly 90 per cent of inhabitants of Palestine at that time – were not mentioned as a nationality or a group which deserved self-determination. The British government might have overestimated both the Jewish influence in the United States and Russia, as well as the influence of the Jewish opinion in Germany (Cleveland, 2000; Pappé, 2004; Smith, 2004). To keep France at bay during and after the war, Britain agreed with France to divide the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire into

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spheres of influence between the two allies. Of the three agreements, Britain followed this one the most closely (Shlaim, 1995). In turn, the Sykes–Picot Agreement defined the post-war League of Nation mandates and the political borders of many Middle Eastern countries after independence from the mandate. The British were granted the mandate for Palestine – following the logic of the Balfour Declaration, but this by itself contradicted promises made during the war to both France and to Sharif Hussein. During the British mandate the population of Palestine doubled due to the natural growth of the population as well as Zionist immigration (Cleveland, 2000). In addition, the Jewish agency bought land from Arab landlords, turning Arab peasants into landless workers, much as happened in other colonial contexts (see, for example, Anderson, 1986 on the Italian colonization of Libya for a comparable situation in terms of land acquisition by the Italian government). However, land purchase up to the establishment of the state of Israel did not exceed 6 per cent of the total land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean (Kimmerling and Migdal, 2003). Needless to say, the Arab and Jewish communities generally did not cooperate and continued to work separately from each other during the mandate. The Arab community demonstrated similar dynamics to the surrounding Arab countries, with conflicting classes and feuding Arab leaderships. The years 1936–9 marked a popular Palestinian uprising against Britain and against the Zionist plans for a national home for the Jews. The uprising centered in both Haifa and Nablus enjoyed the support of villagers all over Palestine. Palestinian villagers tired of the elite’s leadership, their feuds and their general disrespect towards the poorer classes, in addition to their general unhappiness with the British and the Zionist agenda in Palestine. This uprising was also misrepresented by well-intentioned scholars such as Kimmerling and Migdal (2003), who solely focused on the violence perpetrated by the activists (see also Swedenburg, 1993). However, unlike in other Arab countries, Britain ruled Palestine directly, thus preventing the Arab community from actually governing. In contrast, the Zionist movement had a unity of purpose enabling it to build institutions. Britain generally showed a preference for dealing

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with the Jewish leadership rather than the Arab leadership. Also, Jewish fighters participated in combat in World War II alongside Britain, which gained them inside knowledge of the British military. David BenGurion, emerging as a Jewish leader between the wars, informed the Jewish people during World War II that they should fight with Britain as if Zionism did not exist, but they should fight for the building of the state of Israel as if the war didn’t exist (Cleveland, 2000; Smith, 2004). During and after World War II, Britain dithered in the face of the two competing national communities and eventually settled on the partitioning of Palestine. The British, however, also punished opposition by the Arab leadership by sending them into exile or prison. After the war, the guilt of Europeans and Americans regarding the Holocaust further complicated the situation within Palestine and between the Zionists and the British. Thus, in 1947, Britain decided to leave Palestine and refer the question of Palestine to the newly founded United Nations (UN). The UN General Assembly Resolution 181 suggested the partition of Palestine into two national states and the internationalization of the Jerusalem area. The dissipated Arab leadership rejected the resolution. One should note that the Arab population at that point was roughly 70 per cent and the Jewish population roughly 30 per cent, in spite of the recent immigration from Europe. The partition plan suggested that the Arab state would be on roughly 45 per cent of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and the Jewish state, with most of the coastline of Palestine, would be roughly 55 per cent. A Palestinian perspective on the partition is well expressed by the poet Abu Salma (Abd Al-Karim Al-Karmi, 1907–80) in his ‘My Country on Partition Day’: They’ve prohibited oppression among themselves But for us they legalized all prohibitions! In the West man’s rights are preserved, But the man in the East is stoned to death. Justice screams loudly protecting Western lands But grows silent when it visits us! (Abu Salma, 1992: 96) Between the November 1947 announcement of the partition plan and the declaration of the State of Israel in May 1948, much of

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the Palestinian Arab population either left in the hope of returning after the war, or was driven out of the country. Between May and December 1948 the neighboring Arab states (still under the hegemony of Britain and France) fought Israel and Israel defeated the combined Arab armies. Much has been written about this war. Rogan and Shlaim (2001) remind us that the numbers of Jewish soldiers far exceeded the numbers of the Arab soldiers from all the countries combined, and that the Arab armies were generally disorganized and ill-equipped. The Arab army that performed the best was the Jordanian Arab Legion under the command of British General Glubb Pasha. They also remind us that Emir Abdullah of Jordan arrived at an understanding with Jewish leaders that he would stop the Jordanian army from proceeding further than today’s West Bank, on condition that the West Bank would become part of Jordan. The newly emerging state of Jordan doubled its population by adding the population of the West Bank. In December 1948, the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) recognized the right of the Palestinian refugees to return ‘and live at peace with their neighbours’ (Kimmerling and Migdal, 1993: 431). A ceasefire was signed by Israel and its neighbors in 1949 (the Rhodes Agreement) in which Israel held 77 per cent of mandatory Palestine, and Transjordan annexed the West Bank. The Gaza Strip was occupied by the Egyptians and the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip remained without legal citizenship. Over 700,000 Palestinian refugees were barred from returning to their homes by the state of Israel in spite of UN Resolution 194. More than 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed, and the Palestinian presence in cities such as Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Lydda and Ramlah disappeared (Kimmerling and Migdal, 1993). As for the tiny remaining Arab population inside what became Israel, they became citizens of Israel, living under a military regime until 1966. Many Palestinians were forced out of their villages and became displaced or internal refugees, with Nazareth becoming the urban center of this shattered community. Palestinians came to view this tsunami of the dissolution of their communities (physically, socially and politically) as the Nakba, or the catastrophe.

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The Arab–Israeli conflict In the aftermath of the shock of the 1948 Nakba it seemed that the Palestinian people disappeared (Khalidi, 1997). Jewish immigration to Israel continued from Europe as well as from the Middle East. Jewish immigrants occupied the formerly inhabited physical space of the Palestinians who left. The Palestinians became stateless refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt, and as professional workers in the developing Gulf states. In Jordan and in Israel they became citizens. The Jordanian Palestinians from now on had to negotiate their political and social space within changing Jordanian attitudes and policies towards them. In many ways, Jordanian national identity from now on was built in relation to the Palestinian ‘Other’ (Massad, 2001). In many ways this was the mirror image of what was happening in the newly emerging Israeli national identity. Israeli identity was established in relation to the Arab ‘Other.’ The word ‘Palestinian’ was often avoided in Israel for two reasons: because of the denial of Palestinian identity by Israelis, and because of Palestinians designating themselves as Arab, following the ideas of Arab nationalism of that era. Indeed, there was – and is – a prevailing feeling that Arab Jews immigrating to Israel had to be ‘Israelized’ and to blend in with an Ashkenazi-Israeli identity. The early founders of the state of Israel did not feel comfortable with hybrid identities such as Arab Jews, originally from Palestine or from the surrounding Arab countries (Shafir and Peled, 2002: 95). Nor were they comfortable with the Israeli Arab citizens, the remnants of the Palestinian community inside Israel (Shafir and Peled, 2002: 125). In addition, the Arab village was mythologized and became the prototype of identity of the remaining Arab population in Israel (Gil, 2006: 152–184). This overemphasis of village identity inside Israel served two purposes: it fed into the stereotypes of early Jewish settlers of the primitive unchangeable Arabs, and it also created a state– citizen relationship defined by Hamula (village families) which by itself encouraged the clientelistic relationship the state was cultivating with regard to its Arab population. Many progressive and sympathetic Israeli scholars believed this myth (Kimmerling and Migdal, 2003), as well as most of the Palestinian Israeli scholars, themselves from

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a village background (Ghanem, 2001), and many well-intentioned Americans (Rubenberg, 2001). Much has been written on the early years of the state of Israel and on the early years of dispossession of the Palestinians. Many Palestinians have come to view themselves as tragic figures who contributed to their downfall and to their departure from their home (see for example Ghassam Kanafani’s ‘Returning to Haifa’, 2000). The ineptitute and the tragic passivity of the Palestinians is captured in this poem by Mahmoud Darwish. How many times it is over with us –Will you speak to me, father? –They signed an agreement in Rhodes, my son. –What does it have to do with us, what does it have to do with us, father? –It is over with us ... –How many times it is over with us, father –It is over. They paid their duties: they fought with broken guns, and we paid our duties, and abandoned our trees, so that we don’t move the soldier’s hat. (Darwish, 2001: 37, author’s translation) In this poem, Darwish has a conversation with his father (imagined or real) in which his father is passively accepting the defeat once the truce agreement was signed in Rhodes. Darwish makes a reference to the Egyptian army which was sent with weapons which did not work. In Israel, however, this age is generally viewed as the ‘age of innocence’, when the social ideals of Zionism were met, in contrast with the ‘age of the corruption’ of the Jewish soul after the occupation of the remainder of Palestine in 1967 (Pappé, 2006). A number of scholarly works in the early 1990s shattered this national narrative of the 1948 story of David and Goliath (Morris, 1990). This scholarship also showed that the Palestinians did not leave in 1948 of their own volition; rather, the Jewish leadership had a methodical plan to drive them out. Morris (2004), later reflecting back on his earlier scholarship, asserted his position that the 1948 war was a historic necessity. Ilan Pappé, another historian of a later generation, revisits ‘Plan Dalet’ – the plan to drive the Arab community out of Palestine (Pappé, 2006).

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In contrast to Morris, Pappé discusses the morality of the issue and clearly labels it ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Pappé’s perspective will be further analyzed as one of my interviewees. Pappé, in contrast to Morris, raises the issue of the morality of what happened. The Israeli narrative was also forcefully recently challenged by Hillel Cohen (2004), who examined the clientelistic relationship between the state of Israel and its Arab citizens during the military regime between 1948 and 1966. Cohen documents the collaboration of leaders of the Palestinian community with the Israeli Mossad from the inception of the state, in order to facilitate the control of the remainder of the Palestinian community in what became Israel. In the broader Middle East, this period witnessed the height of Arab nationalism as countries gained independence from Britain and France. In addition, this was also the time of the Cold War, when countries were pressed to align themselves either with the United States or with the Soviet Union. Four regional wars also defined this time period. First there was the Suez Crisis in 1956, in which Israel, Britain and France attacked Egypt. This war resulted in the rise of US influence in the Middle East and the demise of British and French dominance. Israel emerged from the 1967 war as the dominant regional military power. All of historic Palestine and the Golan Heights and Sinai came under Israeli control, with the occupation by Israel of the West Bank (from Jordan), the Gaza Strip and Sinai (from Egypt) and the Golan Heights (from Syria). After the 1967 war, the UN Security Council issued Resolution 242 asking Israel to withdraw from ‘territories occupied in the recent conflict,’ and for the ‘termination of all claims or states of belligerency,’ and the ‘achieving a just settlement for the refugee problem.’ The results of the 1967 war psychologically shook the confidence in ‘being an Arab’ for both Arab leaders and publics. This year was commemorated in literature, art, historic accounts and all cultural outlets as the beginning of a very painful self-examination. The Naksa (the ‘setback’ in Arabic) as it became known was the opening of ‘a disturbance of spirits’ (Hourani, 2002 [1991]: 434), which forced a rethinking of Arab nationalism and state-building all over the Arab world.

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The objective of the 1973 war between Egypt and Syria against Israel from the Arab perspective was to regain the lands lost in 1967. The UN Security Council issued Resolution 338 calling for a ceasefire, and for the immediate implementation of UN Resolution 242. The 1973 war ended without any clear conclusion but eventually led to peace talks between Israel and Egypt under US sponsorship, and to the signing of the Camp David Agreement in 1979. The agreement separated the Palestinian issue from Israel’s making peace with its neighbors (Carter, 2006). Over this period, the tension in Arab countries between ideas of Arab unity and the local demands of the respective regimes usually led to political preference for the local demands of the respective regimes. In regard to the Palestinians, in 1964 the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed under the umbrella of Gamal Abd Al-Nasser. With the emergence of the Fatah faction with Yasser Arafat its head, the PLO shifted towards a more Palestinian nationalism (Cobban, 1992). After 1967 the PLO unified under Arafat, but many factions remained. The PLO pushed for self-determination for the Palestinians by the Palestinians. The PLO was supported and considered the official representative of all of the Palestinian people regardless of locality or citizenship status. As Jordan became the place where most displaced Palestinians ended up – particularly after the second wave of Palestinian displacement in 1967 – the PLO challenged the Jordanian regime. The regime was able to crush the challenge in 1970 in what became known as ‘Black September’ (Massad, 2001). The PLO headquarters then moved to Lebanon and were soon engaged in the Lebanese civil war (1975–89). In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon in order to install a pro-Israel government under the Phalangist regime. Beirut quickly capitulated. Israel also wished to eliminate the PLO presence in Lebanon. After two shocking massacres in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in September that year, the Israeli public organized massive demonstrations against the war. Israel withdrew its forces from most of Lebanon but continued to have a military presence in southern Lebanon until the year 2000.

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In Israel, Labor Zionism formed the successive governments from 1948 until 1977, when the Likud, the opposition party built on the revisionist idea of greater Israel, won the elections. From 1977, however, Israeli politics became fractured and polarized between the two major parties: Labor and Likud. Israel also started the settlement project in the West Bank and Gaza Strip right after the signing of the Camp David agreement with Egypt. Regarding the issue of the settlements, in many scholars’ accounts, the situation today has a historic link to the early Zionist immigration, and the settling of Palestine. The settlement as a state-nation project has had the ethos of the collective good of the Jewish community at its foundation, à la the early agricultural settlements and its socialist ideology. Shafir and Peled (2002) divide the settlement movement after the establishment of the state of Israel into the following timeline: 1949– 1967, 1967–1977 (the year the Likud party won the elections, for the first time), 1977-through the first intifada, 1993 (Oslo Accords) and beyond. 1) After the Rhodes Agreement in 1949, the borders between Israel and the neighboring countries were more or less determined. The settlement frontier became confined to Rhodes Agreement borders, namely the 77 per cent of historic Palestine. 2) After the Six Day War, the ‘frontier reopens’ (Shafir and Peled, 2002: 159), this time as a security measure. Under successive Labor governments, the Allon plan – after Yigal Allon, a prominent politician in the Labor movement – a non-official plan for settlements was adopted (Shafir and Peled, 2002: 161). The plan was to turn the borders of Israel into ‘security borders’ (Shafir and Peled, 2002: 161). However, in the 1970s, side by side with the ‘security borders’ settlements, a messianic religious settlement movement emerged as well, mainly through the ethno-religious movement of Gush Emonim. But this settlement was still marginal to the Israeli political landscape. 3) After the Likud took power in 1977, Gush Emonim gathered force by tying its ideology to that of the republican common good for

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the Jewish community, with limited success, however (Shafir and Peled, 2002: 169). In addition, this time the socio-economic infrastructure of the settlements was different too. It did not replicate the agricultural collective settlements of the founding fathers, but the liberal discourse became more pronounced through individual economic freedom of the settlers. Settlements, in reality, functioned as suburbs of the already existing big cities beyond the Green Line. This continued through the first and the second intifadas, when the frontier ‘erupted’ (Shafir and Peled, 2002: 184). 4) In the nineties, particularly after the signing of the Oslo Accords, Yitzhak Rabin used the settlement movement as a bargain chip in his power negotiations internally, and in addition, he wanted to create facts on the grounds for future negotiations with the Palestinians. Ehud Barak on the eve of the second intifada was conducting a similar negotiating game. After the Likud government with Ariel Sharon came to power during the second intifada, Sharon pulled out of the Gaza Strip, and the settlements there were abandoned, thus closing the frontier once more. In many scholars’ accounts, Sharon’s realization of republicanism came closer to that of the Labor party, in that there is a limit for expansion, and that concessions have to be made in order to secure the borders. In other words, the hefty military maintenance of the settlements became more of a burden than keeping them (for more on the settlements see B’Tselem and Peace Now 2010; Feige, 2010, and Margalit, 2010). Where do my interviewees fall within this settlement ideology? For the Jewish activists, most of them come from Labor or Labor offshoot ideologies. In other words, they have been brought up with the republicanist ideology of ‘what can you do for the state?’ hence their acceptance of the ‘Israeli Arabs’ as full citizens in the state-building project. As for the activists from Nazareth, they have also adopted the republicanist discourse with its ideals of full participation as equal citizens in a democratic state. They have generally accepted the ‘minority’ position in the ‘frontier within’ (Shafir and Peled, 2002: 110), and look for legal opportunities to improve their civil rights. The Palestinians from

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Ramallah and Jerusalem, however, fall outside this republicanist discourse as they fall geographically as well as legally outside the ‘frontier’ as defined in 1949.

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict The Palestinian intifada started in 1987 as a popular uprising against Israel, first in the Gaza Strip, but soon spreading to the West Bank, and a child holding a stone against the Israeli army became its symbol. At that point the PLO now in Tunis supported the intifada. King Hussein of Jordan soon after announced a disengagement of Jordan from the West Bank, in order to facilitate Palestinian selfdetermination. In 1988, Arafat declared a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, thus providing a PLO de facto acceptance of UN Resolution 242. The intifada, however, showed that the Palestinians themselves in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip could take control of their own fate. This period witnessed also a presence of women from all generations and classes participating in the uprising. The intifada was sidelined in world affairs after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and the resulting US-led coalition defeat of Iraq in 1991. After the US victory in Iraq, President George Bush, calling for a new world order, gathered Middle Eastern parties at a peace conference in Madrid in November 1991. The Gulf War and its aftermath coincided with the fall of the Soviet Union, leaving the USA as the only major player in Middle East politics. The Madrid Conference was followed by two years of US-sponsored talks in Washington, DC, between Israeli officials and Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but with no official PLO representatives The talks, however, failed to conclude, particularly after secret talks between PLO and Israeli officials in Norway resulted in the Oslo Accords. In many ways, the Madrid talks and the Norway talks exposed differences and tensions between the outside PLO leadership and the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The secret talks in Norway led to the signing of the Oslo Accords at the White House in September 1993. Arafat, the head of the PLO, and Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister signed the agreement

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amid a media celebration around the world as the beginning of a new era between Palestinians and Israelis. What was signed was a declaration of principles for future negotiations based on mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO. The agreement, however, did not discuss the three major issues: the rights of refugees, Jerusalem, and Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Oslo Accords were followed by a signing of a second agreement in 1994 between the PLO and Israel, in which Israel gave control of three cities to the newly formed Palestinian Authority headed by Arafat. Arafat returned to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He was initially given autonomy in Ramallah and Jericho in the West Bank and Gaza City in the Gaza Strip (4 per cent of the territory of the West Bank and Gaza). But soon afterwards, roadblocks and checkpoints were set up by Israel to control movement between the Palestinian Authority areas and the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This was followed by a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan in 1994. Many groups and individuals objected to the Oslo Accords right from their inception. West Bank and Gaza personalities who participated in the Madrid talks had reservations (Ashrawi, 1995). In addition, public intellectuals such as Edward Said warned against the agreement’s flaws and saw the Oslo Accords as a rearrangement of the occupation (Said, 1996). Said and other intellectuals saw the danger of turning the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into an apartheid situation, where the Palestinian community is physically separated but internally controlled by Palestinians themselves. In other words, Arafat was being perceived as an instrument in the hands of the Israeli occupation (Aburish, 1999). The real threat to the Accords, however, did not come from public intellectuals but rather from Hamas, the dominant Islamist group in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hamas was formed in 1989 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood to coordinate activities during the intifada. To protest the Accords and the continued Israeli occupation, Hamas launched a series of suicide bombings on Israeli civilian targets. While the Israeli public initially supported the peace process, it started to withdraw its confidence in the Israeli government’s tactics. In addition, the Israeli settler movement became more visible

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in politics during the 1990s partly because the government of Israel continued to support the settlement movement by building more settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in order to create facts on the ground when the time came for final agreement. Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist during a peace rally in 1995. The then Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres thus became prime minister. Peres, however, lost the 1996 elections to the Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu partly as a result of Hamas’s suicide bombing campaign. Despite initial reluctance, Netanyahu, due to pressure from US President Bill Clinton, signed the Wye Agreement with Arafat, in which he gave the PLO control over parts of the city of Hebron. Netanyahu’s government did not last long, and a Labor government headed by Ehud Barak won early elections in 1999. In 2000, Barak pulled all Israeli forces out of southern Lebanon. He also promised the Israelis would arrive at a final agreement with the Palestinians. In July 2000, Clinton and Barak pressured Arafat to meet at Camp David to complete final status negotiations. The parties failed to reach an agreement and Clinton and Barak publicly blamed Arafat for the failure. Arafat’s refusal to sign the Camp David Agreement was much scrutinized by the media, public figures and by scholars. According to Hussein Agha and Robert Malley (2001) – who were present at Camp David – Arafat refused to sign the agreement mainly because he did not trust Barak to implement a new agreement since Israel had not implemented earlier agreements signed by Barak or Netanyahu. Also, settlement building had continued furiously during Barak’s tenure. Arafat, in other words, felt cornered. Soon after the failure of the talks, a second Palestinian intifada erupted, sparked by the visit of the now Likud leader Ariel Sharon to the Dome of the Rock or Temple Mount (considering the Palestinian collective memories of Sharon’s involvement in the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and his indirect responsibility for the massacres in Sabra and Shatila’s Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon at the hands of the Lebanese Phalangists, at that time). The Israeli government reacted with the use of excessive force and again blamed Arafat for inciting the Palestinian street. Barak’s government fell and early elections were held in 2001, which were subsequently won by Sharon.

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After coming to power, Sharon escalated the use of force in an effort to subdue the intifada (see for example the report of Terje Larsen, the UN envoy to Jenin on April, 18 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ middle_east/1937387.stm – last accessed January, 5 2011). In 2002, Sharon confined Arafat to his headquarters in Ramallah. Arafat died in a Paris hospital in November 2004 after his health had deteriorated under siege. Sharon formed a new party, Kadima, which incorporated senior members from both the Likud and Labor (like Peres) parties in November 2005 in preparation for the next Israeli elections. But by January 2006, Sharon had suffered a massive stroke, and fell into a permanent vegetative state. Nonetheless, the party he had created, Kadima, which was now headed by Ehud Olmert, the former mayor of Jerusalem, won the March 2006 elections. Soon after Arafat’s death his deputy Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) was elected president of the Palestinian Authority. Israel decided unilaterally to withdraw its forces and its settlement presence from the Gaza Strip during the summer of 2005. With European, US and Israeli pressure, elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council were held in 2006, which Hamas won. Israel, the USA and the EU boycotted the newly formed Hamas government. In 2007, after an attempted coup by Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah supporters, fighting between Hamas and Fatah resulted in the eviction of Fatah from the Gaza Strip. Subsequently, Israel fought with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 and invaded Gaza in 2009, on both occasions killing many hundreds of civilians and inflicting huge damage on civilian infrastructure.

Conclusion As the name of the conflict switched over the years from the Arab– Israeli conflict to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, so too did the concept of what constituted Palestine change. Is it the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean? Is it the West Bank and the Gaza Strip? How do we define Palestinian identity in relation to its varying physical boundaries? The same holds true for Israel. We will try to answer some of these questions through the narratives of the

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people interviewed for this book. For Said, these questions are perhaps too complex to answer. What I mean is that no people – for bad or for good – is so freighted with multiple, and yet unreachable and indigestible, significance as the Palestinians. Their relationship to Zionism, and ultimately with political and even spiritual Judaism, gives them a formidable burden as interlocutors of the Jews. Then their relationship to Islam, to Arab nationalism, to Third World anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist struggle, to the Christian world (with its unique historical and cultural attachment to Palestine), to Marxists, to the socialist world – all these put upon the Palestinian a burden of interpretation and a multiplication of selves that are virtually unparalleled in modern political or cultural history. (Said, 1979: 122) My grandfather, Khalil Al-Sheikh Suleiman, was born in Nazareth in 1885 to a family that was integrated into the administrative affairs of the Ottoman Empire, in both the military and the religious corps. He was educated in Ottoman schools in Nazareth and Damascus, took a post in a military school in Damascus and served as an officer in the Ottoman army during World War I in Medina. After the war, he retired to Nazareth – now under British control. And if this was not a sufficiently disorienting experience for him, after 1948 the entire economy, society and landscape changed again. What did my mild-mannered, quiet, old grandfather think? How did he deal with all the devastation of what happened? And how did he deal with the discontinuity of his and his ancestors’ way of life? He remained in his town on the exact land of his ancestors. But did he find continuity and meaning to life afterwards? What did he think while sitting reading a book under an old fig tree in his orchard? I will never know the answers to these questions. Or what did my grandmother, a daughter of a land-owning family, think? How was she going to raise her children without the continuity and certainty of the old world? My father tells us that when they faced crises growing up, it was my grandmother’s will that kept them going. She cultivated

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the piece of land they lived on with her own hands in order to feed her family. And where are we now? How is all this going to end? The late Baruch Kimmerling, in one of his last books, Politicide (2003), anxiously warned that the current Israeli policies will lead to the total erasure of the Palestinians as an entity, but in the process of doing that, Israeli Jewish identity will become corrupt at the moral level. Kimmerling defined politicide as: A process whose ultimate goal is the dissolution of the Palestinian people’s existence as a legitimate social, political and economic entity. This process may also but not necessarily include their partial or complete ethnic cleansing from the territory known as the land of Israel. (2003: 3–4) Norman Finkelstein (2003), no less pessimistic than Kimmerling, fears that the total ethnic cleansing or transfer of the Palestinian people from their land is still a possibility considering the political atmosphere in Israel and the support Israel receives from the USA. Considering the lives of many people on both sides who have dedicated themselves to peace, I would like to end these thoughts on a more hopeful note. This book is about only a few of these peace activists, but I hope it will shed some light on the pursuit of peace on both sides by those who envision a brighter future.

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3 WHO AR E THESE WOMEN AND MEN?

I will discuss in this chapter who my interviewees are and the context of my interviewing them, exploring what motivates these individuals to work for peace. The women and men I interviewed come from three different groups: Israeli Jews from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa; Palestinians with Israeli citizenship from Nazareth; and Palestinians from Jerusalem who have either Jordanian or Palestinian citizenship (although some other Palestinians in Jerusalem lack citizenship). The women and men I met cover the whole spectrum of two generations, adults from their 30s to their 80s. I conducted the interviews in Nazareth, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa during the summers of 2005 and 2006. Ultimately, for this study, I have drawn on 12 of these interviews, but I met and interviewed many other individuals during these summers, and I talked informally to many more. I also joined an Israeli women’s group, Machsom Watch (Checkpoint Watch), for a day, monitoring the major Israeli checkpoint south of the Palestinian city of Nablus. My conclusions are reached both as a result of the formal interviews I conducted, the informal meetings and conversations I had with peace activists, as well as due to my own experiences having grown up and worked in both societies. Thus, my own perspective on the conflict is, in many ways, inevitable and unavoidable, but also perhaps, desirable.

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I conducted the formal interviews in English with all activists. I generally started the interview in Arabic or Hebrew, and then moved to English when it was time to record and to ask the pre-prepared questions. The presence of the recorder, as well as the switch to English, caused the interviews to be more formal in tone, and it created a psychological distance between me and the interviewees. I preferred this neutral language choice, as it put me slightly outside the identity category that I belong to in relation to the three groups. In addition, I chose English because Israeli Jews and Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip use it when they meet each other. Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip do not speak Hebrew. Israeli Jews may or may not know Arabic. Thus, English, the former colonial language of Palestine, becomes the lingua franca between both groups.

The interviewees The people I interviewed come from different organizations and different strands of ideology, but I chose them on the basis of their being self-identified peace activists who believe in the necessity of dialogue. Nevertheless, there are internal differences among all of them. I will discuss each participant separately. In the excerpts of the interviews used throughout the book I will refer to the interviewees and myself by using our initials. Overall, I use the formal interviews of eight women and four men. The fact that I interviewed more women than men perhaps reflects the reality of activism. Most non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have more women than men, particularly on the Israeli side. In Israel in 1987, 57 per cent of politically active women were participating in informal organizations rather than formal politics (Magno, 2002: 27). Magno shows concern that this alternative politics might marginalize women rather than advance them. Langohr (2004) expresses similar concerns with regard to Palestinian women. Their nongovernmental activities were not able to challenge the ‘Arafatization’ of the political structure in the West Bank and Gaza (Langohr, 2004: 185). However, contrary to Langohr’s concerns, Ashrawi argues that

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the visibility gained by women during the first intifada will be longlasting. I am confident that we will not follow the Algerian model. When I hear women say we won’t go back to the kitchen, that is music to my ears. I know that I can deal with any man on the basis of equality, as an individual, and not as an exception. If you look at the whole political picture, you will see that many women are in very responsible positions, making decisions, and are right at the forefront of the struggle. You will see that it is going to be very difficult to send these women back to the kitchen or to relegate them to the class of second rate citizens. (cited in Zalatimo, 1998: 189) From Nazareth I interviewed the following Palestinians who are Israeli citizens: Nabila Espanioly, Samira Khouri and Mohammad Zaidan. From Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, I interviewed the following Jewish Israelis: Gila Svirsky, Naomi Chazan, Shulamit Aloni, Uri Avnery, Yael Dayan and Ilan Pappé. On the Palestinian side, in Jerusalem I interviewed Amneh Badran and Mahdi Abd Al-Hadi; in Ramallah I interviewed Zahira Kamal. In 2005 I interviewed: Gila Svirsky, Naomi Chazan, Shulamit Aloni, Uri Avnery, Yael Dayan, Ilan Pappé and Amneh Badran. In 2006 I interviewed: Mahdi Abd Al-Hadi, Zahira Kamal, Samira Khouri, Nabila Espanioly and Mohammad Zaidan. During the summer of 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip causing the settler movement to actively protest at the time of the interviews. In the summer of 2006, a few weeks after I conducted my interviews, Israel attacked Lebanon in retaliation for Hezbollah kidnapping Israeli soldiers. While I was there, there were no particular signs of a war, as nobody talked about a possible upcoming war, not even the press. The tension in the air was the usual amount of tension which I am accustomed to when I visit. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Hamas and Fatah had already started fighting with each other, but on a far less serious scale than what followed the next year. Shulamit Aloni, in 2005, had predicted that the

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humiliating conditions to which the people in Gaza were subjected would lead the Palestinians to fight among themselves. I will give a brief profile of each of these individuals in alphabetical order. Mahdi Abd Al-Hadi (MAH) is a Palestinian and head of the research center PASSIA: the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, in Jerusalem, which he founded in 1987. He is in his 60s. Previously he had founded the newspaper Al-Fajr in the 1970s. He participated in some of the talks during Oslo as a consultant. He has a doctorate in peace studies from the University of Bradford. I interviewed him on June 19, 2006. Shulamit Aloni (SA) is a veteran Jewish Israeli politician and human rights lawyer in her 80s. She first joined the Knesset with the Labor party and later formed her own party (Ratz), which later united with two other parties to form the current Meretz party. In the 1990s, during Yitzhak Rabin’s premiership, Aloni served as minister of education (she was removed from this post because of pressure from religious groups), and later as minister of communication. She is a founder of Yesh Din, a human rights organization. She lives near Tel Aviv. I interviewed her on July 6, 2005. Uri Avnery (UA) is a German-born veteran Israeli Jewish politician and journalist in his 80s. He participated in the 1948 war, but later became a vocal advocate for recognition of the Palestinian people and their self-determination. As a journalist during the 1950s and 1960s, he edited Haolam Hazeh, which was published in both Hebrew and Arabic versions. During the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982, he visited Yasser Arafat and wrote a book about that meeting. He was a vocal supporter of the Oslo Accords and is an honorary head of the Israeli Peace Bloc. Today he publishes a weekly column on his website. I interviewed him on June 28, 2005. Amneh Badran (AB) is a Palestinian activist from Jerusalem in her 30s. When I met her, she was the director of the Jerusalem Center for Women, which works with the Israeli Bat Shalom (Daughters of Peace) under the name of the Jerusalem Link. She is currently working on a doctorate in Britain. I interviewed her on July 14, 2005. Naomi Chazan (NC) is an Israeli Jewish professor of political science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is in her 60s. She was

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a Knesset member in the 1990s for Meretz. She also participated in many informal and formal meetings with Palestinians in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords and in support of the Accords. She has written extensively on postcolonial Ghana. She is a founder and member of Keshet, the Israeli women’s network. I interviewed her on July 4, 2005. Yael Dayan (YD) is the daughter of Moshe Dayan, the Israeli defense minister during the 1967 and 1973 wars. She has been involved in politics since her youth. At the time I interviewed her she was the deputy mayor of Tel Aviv where she resides. She is in her 60s. She was a vocal supporter of the Oslo Accords as a Labor party Knesset member during Rabin’s premiership. She is also a vocal activist for women’s rights in Israel. I interviewed her on July 11, 2005. Nabila Espanioly (NE) is from Nazareth, with an academic background in psychology and education. After studying in Germany, she came back to Nazareth in 1989 to establish the Childhood Center (Tufula), a multi-purpose center for women and children. She is a founder and currently a chair of Musawa (Equality). She is in her 50s. She is also a member of the peace movement and works organizing rallies against the occupation, and meetings between Jewish women on the one hand and Palestinians in the West Bank on the other. She is also active in promoting women’s rights within Israeli institutions. I interviewed her on June 28, 2006. Zahira Kamal (ZK) is a veteran Palestinian activist from Jerusalem in her 60s. She was educated in Cairo and founded a number of women’s organizations in the West Bank. She participated in the Madrid talks along with Hanan Ashrawi and Suad Amiry. Later she was minister of women’s affairs in the Palestinian Authority. She is affiliated with the left-leaning Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) party, as well as with Fida, the Jerusalem Link and other organizations. I interviewed her on June 21, 2006. Samira Khouri (SK) is a veteran activist from Nazareth in her 70s. She seeks greater social justice within the state of Israel. She advocates for Palestinian rights within and outside of the boundaries of Israeli law and sovereignty. She promotes dialogue and understanding between Arab and Jewish women, and has spent her life organizing meetings between these women. She also often represents Palestinians

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in and outside of Israel at numerous international conferences. I interviewed her on June 2006. Ilan Pappé (IP) is a Jewish Israeli historian who is from Haifa and taught at Haifa University for many years. He is part of a movement for re-reading Zionist history. He is in his 50s, and today teaches at the University of Exeter in the UK. When I conducted the interview, he was living in a pastoral town between Haifa and Nazareth. He is also a vocal advocate of a single state solution. He has published extensively on the dispossession of the Palestinian people. He also worked as the academic director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Habiba during the 1990s. I interviewed him on July 3, 2005. Gila Svirsky (GS) is an American, born in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She is an Israeli Jewish activist in her 50s. She is a co-founder of several Israeli organizations such as Women in Black, Bat Shalom, B’tselem, Coalition of Women for Peace and Machsom Watch, all of which promote dialogue with Palestinians and a peaceful resolution. She also worked in the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayyemet). I interviewed her on June 29, 2005 in Jerusalem. Mohammad Zaidan (MZ) is an activist in his 40s. He runs the Center for Arab Citizens Rights in Nazareth (HRA). His center represents Palestinians in Israel in the legal and institutional system. He also studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I interviewed him on June 26, 2006. All of the interviewees are fluent in English, although in varying degrees. They use English in writing and in public speaking. Svirsky is the only native English-speaker, but she is fluent in Hebrew. Avnery and Espanioly are fluent in German too.

The context of the interviews My relationship to the activists varied. In Nazareth, I am a member of the community. Even though I have lived in the USA for many years, people still recognize me as one of them. For example, Samira Khouri started her conversation with me stating that she knew who my grandfather was. Nabila Espanioly went further in that she problematized my relationship to her. She said she knew my aunt and that, by itself,

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locates me in a specific position with her and affects our interaction. Uri Avnery assumed I wanted to hear more about Nazareth and how it capitulated in 1948, and he provided me with a first-hand story from within the Israeli military. Mahdi Abd Al-Hadi opened his interview by locating his family in the landscape of Palestinian feudal families during Ottoman times. In other words, he wanted me to know that he comes from the urban notables of old times and he thought, with my being from Nazareth, that I might not have realized who his family was. Yael Dayan talked extensively about the rights of Israeli Arabs and their location in Israeli politics – a topic which was not prompted by my scripted questions. Or, lastly, Amneh Badran told me that I ask ‘good questions,’ unlike many researchers who come from US universities and fail to ask the questions which are valued as interesting by the interviewee. I attribute that to myself being an insider, in spite of my years in the USA. I asked each of the interviewees five standard questions. What motivates you personally to work towards peace? What is peace? Do you trust the other side? Do you have an advantage as a woman or man, in your peace activism (as compared to someone of the other gender)? How do you see the end of the conflict? The following chapters analyze their responses. I tried to keep my responses in the interview as minimal as possible without being perceived as uninvolved in what the interviewees had to say. Additionally, I asked follow-up questions in order to enhance the flow of the talk, and for further clarification. The choice of interviewees does not cover all the geographic areas of Israel/Palestine. The Gaza Strip was beyond my reach, and so were Palestinian cities such as Nablus and Hebron in the West Bank. Also, I did not interview Palestinians from the Haifa or Akka (Acre) areas. Added to this, I do not claim to cover the entire political spectrum among the peace activists. My criterion for meeting some of these women and men (if a physical meeting was possible) was a long

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commitment to peace activism and dialogue. As mentioned earlier, I confined my sample of people to Nazareth, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. My choice was led by ease of access, as well as by simply being naturally socially connected to these cities. Nazareth, my hometown, is considered the heart of what was left of Arab cultural activities after the Nakba. Jerusalem is an important metropolitan city for both Arab and Jewish people (in spite of the various constraints the state of Israel puts on Palestinian Arabs to curtail Arab access to the city). Tel Aviv is the rival to Jerusalem and the more secular capital of Jewish cultural activities, with Haifa as Israel’s ‘third’ city. I must explain that my physical movement was much more restricted, sometimes impossible, in the northern (Arab) suburbs of Jerusalem and in Ramallah and the rest of the West Bank. As a holder of an Israeli passport, I was not allowed to travel in the West Bank during my visit in 2005. In order to do so, I had to join Israeli Jewish women from Machsom Watch (who face the same restrictions, but who still visit their Palestinian counterparts through the use of indirect routes, and sometimes through going as an organized peace group). My joining the Israeli women was the easiest way to travel to the West Bank. In 2006, I preferred to go on my own, in spite of the fact that a number of Israeli women peace activists offered to go with me and help me through the checkpoints – as they never stopped going to visit their Palestinian friends even in very dangerous and difficult situations. And I had to face the difficulties involved. A trip between Jerusalem and Ramallah, which used to take about 20 minutes in 2000, now takes about two hours, if it is possible at all. At the times I visited in 2005 and 2006, the separation wall was not completed and a Palestinian cab driver from Jerusalem took me via a dirt road to Ramallah and back, in order to avoid roadblocks and checkpoints. I should note here that drivers from the West Bank have different license plates from Israelis and therefore can be detected by the military patrols quite easily. Palestinians do not drive on the same roads as the Israelis in the West Bank. An Israeli can drive on a highway and go to any settlement in the West Bank without having to stop. Palestinians have to travel on specific roads. Their papers have to be checked at every checkpoint and checkpoints are located at the

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entrance and exit points of every Palestinian village or town. When I traveled with women from Machsom Watch we used the Israeli highways, and so we covered the distance between Nablus in the West Bank and Tel Aviv in less than an hour. This would not have been (and still is not) the case for a Palestinian from the West Bank. First, West Bank Palestinians are prohibited from traveling to Tel Aviv or any place that is in Israel proper. Also, to travel between one village to another in the West Bank – or, in the case of Jerusalem, sometimes to travel between one neighborhood and another – they would need to go through checkpoints. To go from Jerusalem to al-Ram, at the northern suburban tip of Jerusalem, leaving Jerusalem was relatively easy. To return, however, was a different matter. One of the soldiers at the al-Ram checkpoint explained to me that I could not return from the point I exited. Rather, I would need to travel through a different checkpoint, about a 20-minute drive away, through a refugee camp east of al-Ram. Only from there could I re-enter Jerusalem. In the end, some passers-by pointed out a dirt path, where I could walk for about 15 minutes and re-enter Jerusalem from that point instead, because the separation wall was not yet completed there. When I told Israeli friends at the Hebrew University of my ordeal, they seemed unsurprised or uninterested. I asked several members of Machsom Watch about the number of Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank, and no one could give me an exact answer. Estimates ranged from 200 to 500. The reason is the elusiveness of the checkpoints. At any time, anywhere in the West Bank, Palestinians could be faced with army jeeps and a request to show their papers. There are permanent checkpoints, concrete buildings dedicated to that, but there are many others that sprout up on the spot, depending on Israeli military needs on any given day.

What motivates these people to work? It is noticeable on the Israeli side (both Jewish and Palestinian Israelis) that women would be active in more than one organization. It seems that women can more easily take activist positions through voluntary organizations than by becoming members of a political party and

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participating in the politics of the country through ‘formal’ politics such as the Knesset (Magno, 2002: 27). It is this apparent disadvantage which may give women an advantage. Since they were not affiliated with a particular party, they could negotiate their positions without having to abide by a party line or ideological orthodoxy. In addition, organizations such as Machsom Watch and Women in Black are exclusive to women since their inception. When talking to women in those organizations about their preference for gender exclusivity, some Women in Black members said that men would bring a different dynamic to the issue. These women stand silent in city squares and have minimal interactions with passers-by. They think that including men would make this dynamic difficult to maintain. As for women from Machsom Watch, many agreed that the presence of only women at the checkpoints would be softer than the presence of men. The women are perceived as mother figures by the young soldiers, as most of these activists are middle-aged. Therefore their method is more effective when they do not include men in their activities. One more note about these women, in Machsom Watch (which has about 400 members) women do not meet formally, and therefore do not come face to face with other Machsom Watch activists unless they meet at a checkpoint. Keeping the organization loose allows the inclusion of women with a wide array of political beliefs, making it more effective. As one member of Machsom Watch told me, some women participate because they want the end of the occupation. Others do it because the Israeli army is ‘a holy cow,’ a highly valued institution of Israeli society. Thus, some women, including herself, want the army to live up to its high status in society. She also added that the soldiers are their own children and they do not want them to be engaged in violent acts against civilians (Sara Kliachko, interview on June 28, 2005). Another activist in Gush Shalom and Machsom Watch expressed to me that she goes to the checkpoint to warn the soldiers against war crimes that they are committing (Beate Zilversmidt, a member of Gush Shalom, email of August 10, 2004). A third expressed that she goes to stand at the checkpoints to monitor the acts because when a (Palestinian) woman tells her ‘“my work is here, and my house is

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over there and my children are waiting for me” that breaks her heart’ (Hanna Yakin, email of August 19, 2004). Or, as Sara Kliachko noted in an email from August 10, 2004: The women that founded our organization were driven mainly by political concepts – against the occupation. Many of the women that joined the organization later did so for humanitarian reasons – against oppression and against denial of human rights. We felt that the horrible routine created at the checkpoints must be stopped. Our attitude is not necessarily directed toward the welfare of women, although as mothers, grandmothers and wives we better understand the pain of Palestinian women. During our shifts we found out that the soldiers themselves are heavily damaged by the same routine – they have no proper training on keeping in touch with civilians therefore they lose control very easily and use violence instead. I know quite a number of young men that could not stand the situation and decided to leave the country for good. So finally our whole society pays the toll of the checkpoints. Our driving force is complex indeed and includes care for the mental health of our children/soldiers, care for the wellbeing of everyone and a wish to cease the occupation and build two countries for the two nations. With regard to Women in Black, the same loose organization exists. They see getting women to work on a common goal to end the occupation, regardless of their fine-tuned political stances, as a point of strength (Helman and Rapoport, 1997). Women in Black is less loosely organized than Machsom Watch, as members in Israel meet at general conferences and talk with Women in Black members from other countries. However, their activism is influenced by the immediate currents in the political atmosphere in the country. They had to stop their activities during the first Gulf War. They just thought that the general mood was against protest over the occupation of Palestinians. The numbers of women in city squares also went down at the beginning of the second intifada in 2000. The interviews also show that the women do come from different political strands, but

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what unites them all is the belief in a peaceful end to the conflict and the importance of dialogue, even if they do not themselves meet each other for one reason or another. After the outbreak of the second intifada, it became almost impossible for Israelis to meet Palestinians. Israel banned its Israeli citizens from going into the Occupied Territories, so going would involve breaking Israeli law. In addition there was the actual physical difficulty of going when Palestinian cities were besieged. Some Palestinian women from the Jerusalem Center expressed to me that they were not in the mood to meet Israeli women after the start of the intifada, and that they had expected more from their Israeli supporters. However, the same was true of some Israelis. As one Israeli peace activist told me, she had organized meetings between Palestinian and Israeli children from Jerusalem. The Israeli parents cancelled the meetings and refused to send their kids to meet with their Jerusalemite Palestinian neighbors. On the Palestinian side, I had difficulty traveling and contacting women. The Israeli Jewish women and the Israeli Palestinian women were much easier to meet, both in the physical sense and the social sense. In social terms I did not have a sufficient network to connect me to as many women as I wished. Many Palestinian activists would cancel an appointment or just refuse to meet me. Once an interview started, however, activists were generally very warm, open and welcoming. I never had this problem on the Israeli Jewish or Israeli Palestinian side. I could attribute the difficulty of arranging to meet women in the West Bank to the general mistrust West Banker Palestinians feel toward Palestinians who are Israeli citizens. They see them generally as a group who watched silently the violent methods the state of Israel conducted against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. At the beginning of both intifadas, Palestinians inside Israel made it clear that they would not join their brothers and sisters in the West Bank and Gaza in their active resistance to the state of Israel. However, they held rallies and demonstrations in support of both intifadas and generally sent humanitarian donations. Nevertheless, during the second intifada, Israeli police were quick to shoot and kill 13 ‘Israeli Arabs’ in a peaceful demonstration in

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support of the Palestinians and Palestinian statehood in Gaza and the West Bank. Israeli Palestinians also feel that they were marginalized and left out of any talks between Palestinians and Israelis in the 1990s. Generally, the people I met on both sides share a secularist agenda, meaning they prefer to keep religious beliefs in the personal realm. This does not mean that they do not practice religion; some of them do, and some present themselves primarily as being Jewish, Muslim or Christian. What I mean is that all of them are of the conviction that there should be a separation in public life between religion and politics. Nonetheless, the Israelis I interviewed were more straightforward in their condemnation of religious groups, particularly the settlers. This could have been because, at the time I interviewed people in 2005, Ariel Sharon was unilaterally pulling out the Israeli military from the Gaza Strip and evacuating the settlements there. As a result, settlers were protesting on the streets. Some blocked major highways, such as the one connecting Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, by throwing nails on the asphalt. Conversation with settlers is described by Sara Kliachko as ‘conversation of deaf people.’ On the Palestinian side, both in Nazareth and Jerusalem, however, their relationship with Hamas was more subtle. I attribute the reluctance to admonish Hamas, in spite of the conviction many of the Palestinian activists hold that religion should be separated from public life, to the sensitive role Hamas was playing at the time. Also, many of the women and men I interviewed were disillusioned with the Palestinian Authority and its corruption, but they would still cooperate with it. Yet Hamas was also seen as a resistance movement. Also, as Zahira Kamal told me, people in Palestine are pious in nature, being from the place where monotheism started. In other words, Palestinians carry a prevailing legacy of revelations having occurred on their land, regardless of whether they are Christian or Muslim. As to why the Israelis are more vocal about opposing the settlers following a religious-nationalist ideology, perhaps it is because Israelis do not have the pressure of presenting a united house to the world as the Palestinians do – at the time of my interviews in 2006, actual clashes between Fatah and Hamas had already started.

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A note on transcription I informally interviewed many women and men. And I formally interviewed about 20 activists and recorded these interviews. I have chosen 12 interviews to transcribe. For reasons of readability, I use the following notations in the transcripts: Periods and commas separate ideas. Commas mark hesitations and false starts. Three dots (ellipses) mark points of digression in their response. Question mark points to rising intonation. Semi-colon marks listings. Quotation marks are used for direct speech. Exclamation marks are used for emphasis. Laughter is noted in parentheses, as are other extralinguistic forms of expression such as pounding on a table while talking. Asterisks mark incomprehensible words. These interpretative measures had to be taken in order to facilitate the comprehension of the readers of the transcripts. I minimally corrected the grammar to keep the words of my interviewees as authentic as possible. I only corrected the grammar when I thought it interfered with the comprehension of what an interviewee was saying. Lastly, I sometimes kept false starts and repetitions.

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4 A THEORY OF L ANGUAGE DISCOUR SE, IDENTIT Y AND PER SPECTIVIT Y

Clearly the mind is always altering its focus, and bringing the world into different perspectives. (Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1989 [1929]: 97) In the summer of 2006, I was having lunch in Miami with an Iraqi friend who still has family in Iraq, and a Cuban friend from the old aristocracy. Our Cuban friend vehemently complained about the restrictions she had to deal with in order to enter Cuba, which eventually led to her being denied any further return to Cuba. After a pause, my Iraqi friend looked at me for a few seconds and said reflectively, but flatly, ‘I will never understand how anyone could not be able to go back to their country.’ How would anyone understand and analyze this small slice of ordinary interaction? Where is the meaning of this statement made by my Iraqi friend? How is it captured? In what context? How meaningful does this statement become, being said by an Iraqi who lives in the USA, not just to anybody but to a Palestinian? And what theory of language would successfully account for this interaction? These are the issues we will try to discuss in this chapter. This chapter discusses the move in social sciences from ‘language’ to ‘discourse,’ the discursive construction of identity as well as the notion

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of ‘perspectivity’ as a basic characteristic which enables language to be communicative. The chapter concludes with a discussion of perspectivity and the researcher, as well as discourse analysis and feminist theory. Perspectivity as a conceptual tool enables the researcher to reach at the ‘what’s going on?’ (Goffman, 1974: 1) question by bridging the interactional interpersonal level with the larger macro level of power relations between groups, identity and social inequality.

From language to discourse Studies of language as discourse, which puts the emphasis on language as a process, rather than language as sentence-based structure, have mushroomed over the past decade and a half. The initial spark came through the influence of Jacques Derrida (1974), and Michel Foucault’s (1972) writing, even though the intention of both was not to write a theory of language but rather, to put it loosely, to write a theory of knowledge. In linguistics, Foucault’s particular use of the word ‘discourse’ was adopted by analysts tired of traditional grammar and eager to explore the communicative dialogic aspect of language. In addition, this tradition of exploring language is also influenced by neo-Marxist writers such as Pierre Bourdieu (1991), Antonio Gramsci (1971) and others. It is quite natural for a researcher, after identifying the social forces which shape reality in the first place, to take the next step of pointing out the social inequalities which simultaneously shape and are shaped by a particular discourse. This chapter will discuss the meaning of discourse, as well as the scope of the field of discourse analysis, the relationship between discourse and identity, discourse analysis and feminism, and, finally, a foundational aspect of discourse – often neglected – namely the perspectival character of speech.

Discourse Discourse generally deals with language (beyond sentence level, but at the same time, following Foucault, ‘comprises all forms of meaningful semiotic human activity seen in connection with social, cultural, and historical patterns and developments of use’ (Blommaert, 2005: 3).

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Discourse thereby allows a particular mode of thinking about the world and knowing the world. Moreover, discourses are used in the plural to mean ‘practices that systematically form the object of which they speak ... thus discourses are forms of knowledge or powerful sets of assumptions, expectations and explanations, governing mainstream social and cultural practices’ (Baxter, 2003: 8). Discourse and discourse users are inseparable as discourse does not exist without the context of its use. In other words, discourses ‘besides being subject to the social constraints of the context ... also contribute to, construe or change the context’ (Van Dijk, 1997b: 20). What follows from this is that discourse analysis is thus fundamentally critical, whether explicitly so, as in the case of scholars who call themselves Critical Discourse Analysts (see Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999; van Dijk, 2001; Weiss and Wodak, 2003), or whether there is an implicit social reform message, as is the case with some scholars working in sociolinguistics, or in the ethnography of communication in the USA, such as William Labov (1966, 1972), Roger Shuy (1967), John Gumperz (1982), Dell Hymes (1996) and others (see Blommaert, 2005: 6 for an elaborate discussion of explicit and implicit social reforming linguistics). Discourse analysis therefore is not one approach but many – with the explicit or implicit intention of the researcher to expose social inequalities and injustices, and, by bringing these dynamics to the attention of the readers, the hope of helping society to transform itself for the better. The most commonly identified approaches of discourse analysis are: (1) the historic ethnographic approach, best known through the work of Ruth Wodak, (2) the cognitive-based approach of Teun van Dijk, (3) the grammatical approach of Norman Fairclough (see Blommaert, 2005 for a critique of these three), (4) the ethnographic approach of Dell Hymes, (5) the sociolinguistic approaches of William Labov, Roger Shuy and John Gumperz. All these approaches are interdisciplinary and require a synthesis of scholarship from the fields of linguistics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy and history. The approach of this book joins these others in combining methods, assumptions and analyses from the fields of psychology, sociology,

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anthropology, history and linguistics. However, I find my methodology to be most influenced by Wodak’s ethnographic approach, which takes into account the context of the historic events which a society goes through as a significant part in a group’s consciousness and selfawareness. It is my belief that the autobiographical history of a person is closely tied to time and place, and thus the individual perspective on life as well as the self-awareness an individual demonstrates, is situated, to a great degree, in the history of the group this particular individual belongs to, as well as the specific historic events which the individual lives through. What ties these approaches together is the following: (1) they examine language that goes beyond grammatical analysis – which often neglects the context of the production and reception of language, (2) they investigate the unequal access to linguistic resources and thus (3) they shatter the myth of a homogeneous unified language, equally accessible to all members of its community (see Blommaert, 2005), (4) they accord language meaning as it is defined by its users – it is characterized as unstable, always shifting, socially and historically contextualized, and, lastly, (5) they share a concern for what Jan Blommaert (2005: 15) calls the ‘structure of the world system.’ This last articulation, I find most illuminating because it brings into play the global power dynamics. For example, a discussion of Palestinian women cannot be written without a discussion of Muslim women, of the view of Western women of Arab women, whether Muslim or Christian, and of the temporality of a post-September 11 American discourse on Islam and a ‘clash of civilizations.’ In other words: The global context becomes relevant as soon as we identify ongoing discourse or other actions as constitutive of organizational or institutional actions and procedures (legislation, a trial, teaching, news reporting etc.), and when participants are involved in the interaction as members of social categories, groups or institutions. (van Dijk, 1997b: 19) Further, discourse analysis is about the commitment of the researcher to expose social problems and inequalities as a first step towards solving

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them. It is about ‘not taking things for granted’ (Wodak, 2007 in a conversation with Gavin Kendall).

Context At least three levels of analyses can be identified with regard to context: (1) the local, immediate interaction (who’s saying what to whom ‘right now,’ ‘right here’), (2) the historic connection to a larger discourse (‘what’s going on in the immediate interaction is part of a larger discourse’), and (3) the world system (‘what global relations underlie this immediate interaction’). Upon arriving at a university in Oklahoma, while at lunch with colleagues in order to socialize with them and getting to know them, an American anthropologist tells me the following: ‘I just got back from a trip to Jerusalem. I was visiting a Jewish friend there and I had a wonderful time. He told me that Arabs in Jerusalem breed like rabbits.’ I asked my colleague to further explain the offending remark and he said: ‘My friend doesn’t mean anything by that. He was just stating a fact that Arabs breed a lot.’ I said nothing for the sake of being polite and took the first chance to change the subject. What are we analyzing when we as researchers are looking into this interaction? How should my silence be analyzed? I acted as if nothing happened, in spite of the racially charged ‘story,’ and therefore there was no empirical evidence that there was an insult in the story, but obviously there was an insult here. The story was related to me by a new colleague who knows who I am, at a time of an American invasion of Iraq, and at a time when American and Israeli interests in the Middle East are closely tied together, and at a time, when in Israel conferences are held and well attended by public intellectuals on how to keep a Jewish demographic edge on the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. My colleague’s and my interaction are part of a larger whole of a history of the demographic ‘threat’ of the Arabs in historic Palestine, as well as part of the American attitude of domination towards people of the Middle East, in the political and military senses. So far I have held off discussing how power features in all of this, because I wanted to discuss it extensively. There is no such thing as analyzing discourse without addressing the ‘power effects’ (Blommaert,

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2005: 1) in society. In other words, discourse analysis, again following Foucault, is about ‘what power does and how it impacts people’s lives and creates conditions of inequality, which is its deepest effect’ (Blommaert, 2005: 2).

Power Cameron and Kulick (2003: 112) give a good summary of what Foucault means by power. (1) Power is exercised on both the dominant and the dominated. It is not a structure or an institution. (2) Power is everywhere and people and groups are positioned differently in relation to power, ‘the relationship is historically contingent, empirically delineable, and continually in flux’ (2003: 112), political struggle is meaningful and can challenge power effects, but it never ends and no result is ever final. (3) Therefore, power entails resistance. (4) ‘[P]ower subjugates (dominates and makes into subjects) by attaching individuals to specific identities, and by establishing norms against which individuals police themselves and others’ (2003: 112). (5) ‘[W]e come into being as subjects through forms of knowledge, feeling and practice that are culturally constituted and socially distributed, and hence, channeled through power’ (2003: 112). In other words, power construes itself through discourse within ‘social organizations, meanings, relations and the construction of speakers’ subjectivities or identities’ (Baxter, 2003: 8).

From self to subject The European Enlightenment project was occupied with an epistemology of the self as having a free will and as being autonomous. This conception was a result of a certain economic and philosophical moment in European history (Mills, 2003: 17). Thus, this ‘self’ or ‘autonomous speaker’ is very much a product of a colonial stereotypical dichotomy of those in the West who are ‘free-willed, and those whose selves are constrained by societal roles and who are thus unable of independent thought and action’ (Al-Azim, 1993, in Mills, 2003: 18). In other words, the free-willed rational Western individual was judged against a weak Easterner during the European colonial period.

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Self is established through the dialogic negotiation of power between the individual and social institutions. In that aspect, the individual is not totally passive (Althusser, 2000 [1971]), nor is she totally active. It is the ability to challenge authority that will keep identity construction in an ongoing state of flux, never totally fixed and never finalized. Foucault’s (2000 [1978]) death of the self is explained in that ‘the self is only an arena where certain discursive elements are brought into play’ (Mills, 2003: 19). In other words, language is a site where identity is constructed. However, ‘rather than seeing the individual utterance as something that is produced by the speaker at that particular moment, invented anew, as it were, we also need to see the utterance as a result of a longer process of thinking, habit, and past experience’ (Mills, 2003: 21), and therefore, speakers’ utterances should not be analyzed in isolation but in relation to other speakers’ utterances in a wider group or society (Mills, 2003: 26). In that regard, Judith Butler (1990: 144, in Cameron and Kulick, 2003: 104) argues that ‘the epistemological subject has exhausted its usefulness both as an object of philosophical contemplation and as a necessary precondition for political action.’ ‘Epistemological subject’ to Butler means the subject that has an existence independent of its cultural and historic location (Cameron and Kulick, 2003: 137). Subjects are constructed through and within discourses, however, at the same time they exist as ‘thinking, feeling subject[s] and social agent[s], capable of resistance and innovations produced out of the clash between contradictory subject positions and practices’ (Weedon, 1997, in Baxter, 2003: 30).

Identity and the Palestinian/Israeli context What about identity? I asked. He said: self-defence ... Identity is the child of birth, but at the end, it’s self-invention, and not an inheritance of the past. I am multiple ... Within me an ever new exterior. (Darwish, 2004) The poet laureate of Palestine, Mahmoud Darwish captures the Althusserian (Althusser, [200] 1971) notion of identity in this excerpt

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from a poem in which Darwish recalls an imaginary posthumous conversation with Edward Said. To Darwish (as well as Althusser, 2000 [1971]), identity is a child of birth in that it is already determined and regulated for us institutionally, in that we have no choice as individuals in choosing an identity. It is the institutionally fixed personal history, who we were born to, and the group we belong to which predetermine who we are. In other words, there is no core quality to our identity which exists outside the time and place of our existence. What follows from this is what cultural studies scholars such as Stuart Hall (2000) emphasize, namely the relational character of identity. In other words, identity is always defined in relation to the other. This is reminiscent of Simone de Beauvoir (1989 [1952]: ix; see also Goffman, 1977, 1979) who states with regard to gender identity that the definition of ‘woman’ is always measured in relation to what ‘man’ is. De Beauvoir argues that this relational dependence of definition creates a power relation in which ‘woman’ is subordinate to ‘man.’ Hall goes further, to state that all aspects of identity are ‘constructed through, not outside difference’ (2000: 17). In addition, Hall (2000: 17) emphasizes that ‘the constitution of social identity is an act of power.’ He argues that what appears as a coherent identity is the ‘result, not of a natural and inevitable or primordial totality but of the naturalized, over-determined process of “closure”’ (2000: 19). Defining identity construction compels us to accept that groups will define themselves and be defined in terms of dominance and subordination. Toni Morrison (cited in Cameron and Kulick, 2003: 118), tells us that ‘whiteness’ is in fact ‘a disavowal of blackness.’ Or take the example of groups defining themselves as a majority and a minority. This is not about numbers necessarily, but rather about a group relationship in which the minority is dependent on the majority. But groups can still define themselves in different terms in relation to power (see Marková, 2003: 169). I remember my shock at age 18, coming out of Nazareth for the first time in my life to study at the University of Haifa, when I heard the word ‘minority’ in reference to myself and the handful of Arab students in my class. In many ways, I believe that the term was imposed, and I still do not feel comfortable with it, in spite of the fact that Palestinians inside Israel have embraced the term and used it regularly as self-reference.

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I was shocked because up to that point, I had been primarily educated in the Arabic language. I was aware of the historic, intellectual, global depth of the language, as well as its location among roughly 200 million people who speak it as first language, as well as about a billion who profess Islam and use the language in some capacity. So, I asked ‘How am I a minority?’ Further, Nawal El-Saadawi (1997a), the Egyptian feminist, in ‘Why keep asking about my identity?’ poses the problematic of power relations in the definition of identity. She notes that, at conferences in the USA and in Europe, she is always expected to talk about her identity, as if the American women at the conference do not have an identity. The reason for this, Saadawi argues, is because these conferences replicate the already existing power relations between the Western developed world and the Third or developing world. In addition, this is in my opinion a demonstration of what Michael Billig (1995) calls ‘banal nationalism.’ It is the seen but unnoticed nationalism of the Western stable democracies which is not discussed or commented on, but is everywhere and at all levels of semiotic relations in these countries, starting with the flying of the flag in public places. Many authors would agree that identity is not a primordial category, but rather is constructed dialogically. Ivana Marková (2003: 111), for example, considers identity to be a relation between ego and alter (i.e. to put it simply, the self and idealized other). Others, too, would emphasize the non-essential aspect of identity, and therefore focus on its performativity (Blommaert, 2005: 208; Butler, 1990; Cameron, 1997). For example, gender (as well as other aspects of identity) has to be performed discursively in order for it to be meaningful. Identity always has to be constructed in relation to the ‘other’ (Blommaert, 2005: 208; Hall, 2000). Thus, speakers speak from different positions (Blommaert, 2005: 210). Identity is always relational and measured against the ‘other.’ For my grandfather living at the turn of the twentieth century, he was a Nazarene when visiting, let’s say, Akka, a Palestinian when visiting in Damascus, Syrian or Arab when visiting Istanbul, and Ottoman (Turkish) or Muslim when visiting in Europe. To his granddaughter, the picture is very different. For me to say I am Palestinian in the

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USA, always risks a rejection, and it is different from saying ‘I am Palestinian’ in, for example, Cairo. I often received a hug from a storekeeper in Athens or Istanbul when they knew who I was, but not in the USA. And in Israel I wouldn’t even say the word ‘Palestine’ or ‘Palestinian’ for a long time when I was growing up. To sum up, identity is about who I am, but also where I am and with whom I am (see Widdicombe, 1998: 200). In addition, many authors see Palestinian identity as fragmented, as a natural result of the physical fragmentation of the Palestinian people after the Nakba of 1948. Still, as Edward Said insists: ‘we are after all a coherent people’ (Said, 2003a: xxxiv). Rashid Khalidi (1997), on the other hand, reminds us of the complexity of Palestinian identity even before the Nakba: urban elites against the peasants, Jerusalemites against people from other cities such as Nablus, Jerusalem notable families against each other and so on. Relying on identity as a process of ‘othering’ or ‘differentiation from what is not’ (Wodak et al., 1999: 3, citing Benhabib, 1996: 3f.), Joseph Massad (2001) explains how Jordanian national identity was deliberately built (through the regime, the state bureaucracy and the media) against the Palestinian other, particularly after Black September (the military clash between the Jordanian regime and the PLO in 1970; see Lucas, 2005). Anyone visiting Jordan today cannot escape the charged atmosphere of identity politics, even at the interpersonal conversational level. In 2005, while on a trip to Jordan, I stopped to visit the Fulbright office in Amman. One of the women working there welcomed me with, ‘I heard you are a Palestinian from the inside’ (in reference to the Palestinians who remained in Israel after its formation). I answered ‘yes,’ and then I added, ‘I see from your name you are Palestinian too.’ At that point, she responded in frustration: ‘My mother is Jordanian, my father is Palestinian, my maternal grandmother is Syrian, what does that make of me?’ As for the dominant Ashkenazi-Israeli identity, which embodies the new Jew from Europe shedding centuries of passivity and weakness in the face of European racism and starting a new life in the promised land, many researchers also conclude that this identity was built against that of the Arabs (see Cohen, 2004; Gil, 2006; Shafir

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and Peled, 2002; Zertal, 2005). This new identity found it problematic to accept Jews from Arab countries, as well as Palestinian Jews, and a process of ‘de-Arabization,’ that is, culturally differentiating these groups from the Arabs, took place. De-Arabization meant to Gil (2006) what could be called ‘Ashkenization,’ that is, assimilating the Jews from Arab countries into a more hegemonic European style of being Jewish. Gil also discusses how the state was suspicious and resentful of the Palestinian Arabs who remained after the Nakba. Many categories were applied to them such as ‘fifth column’ and ‘present absentees.’ The institutional disdain towards both Arab Jews and Arabs remaining in Israel after its establishment, is a result – according to Gil (2006) – of both groups not occupying clear-cut categories. The first were not clearly Jewish and the latter not clearly Arab as they held Israeli citizenship. This identity politics is still an issue, as the case of Tali Fahima, a young Jewish woman whose parents are North African, testifies. Fahima went to Jenin after the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada in 2002 to live with the family of a militant Hamas activist in Jenin. Her justification was she wanted to feel and know the humanity of the terrorist enemy; she also wanted to create a human shield for Palestinians, thus confusing the national categories of ‘us’ and ‘them.’ She was put in prison awaiting trial for a long time as a result, and several peace groups advocated for her release (after all she did not commit any crime). She testified in prison that she never met the militant member of the family as he was in hiding; rather, she was sharing and living the daily life of his wife and children (see the full story on the website of ‘The Other Israel,’ a newsletter of the Peace Bloc in Israel, August 11, 2004). The institutional hostility to her is explained by her attempt to break the boundary (physical and psychological) between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ In addition, the severity of the punishment (getting thrown into prison), in my opinion is a result of Fahima being already a hybrid case of a Jew – not exactly Jewish and not exactly Arab – because of the fact that her parents had immigrated from an Arab country. It is not to be understood that these two groups are tolerated on the broader Arab side either. Jewish artists and singers who reach out to their Arab roots in their art are often treated with scorn and disdain by the wider Arab public, and

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Arabs from Israel are also treated with mistrust when they meet with other Arabs (as my painful year-long stay in Jordan in 1997 testifies). Lastly, one would wonder too whether Fahima’s gender worked to her disadvantage as well. In other words, she represented a feminine antinationalistic/anti-military stance common in the Israeli–Arab conflict as well as in other conflicts. Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled (2002) present a similar picture, but they emphasize that the character of the state, from its inception, oscillated between three Zionist trends: republican (what can the citizens do for the state?), liberal (the state is for all of its citizens), and ethnonationalist (the state is defined as ethnically Jewish). According to the authors, the republican strand was always dominant (i.e. the state is concerned with what the citizen can do for the state, thus it was able to include the Arab population which stayed after 1948, to some extent, in state-building). The last two became more dominant after the Cold War ended. This is why, among Israeli Jews, there are people today who call for a state for all of its citizens (though they are a minority), people who call for a two-state solution (in order to preserve the Jewish character of the state) and, finally, those who call for a transfer of the Palestinian population from all of historic Palestine and into the surrounding Arab countries. Lastly, imagining a homogeneous monolithic identity, which is a common tool in state-building, serves an ideology in which ‘members of a national community simultaneously construct the distinctions between themselves and other nations’ (Wodak et al., 1999: 4), which, in turn, according to Wodak et al., causes national identity to be ambivalent (1999: 4). In the Palestinian–Israeli context, imagining monolithic identities allows Palestinians and Israelis to perceive themselves in polarized terms and as the antithesis of each other; however, many researchers agree that both national identities are masculinized and militarized (see Abdo, 1994, 2002; Sharoni, 1995). The young poet from Nazareth, Jawdat Eid (2003: 12), aware of the complexity of the construction of his identity, expresses it in his ‘disharmony’ as: ‘I am a crusader-descendant, Phoenician, Arab, Palestinian, Canaanite, terrorist’ (my translation of ‘Salibiy, Phiniqiy, Arabiy, Falastiniy, Canaaniy, Irhabiy’).

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On the other hand, Mahmoud Darwish, in an attempt to collapse the ambivalent and fragile binary division between both Palestinian and Israeli identity prophesies a time when: The Jew will not be ashamed to find the Arab part inside of himself, and the Arab will not be ashamed to declare that he is constituted also by Jewish elements. Especially when talking about Eretz Yisrael in Hebrew and Filistin in Arabic. I am a product of all the cultures that have passed through this land – Greek, Roman, Persian, Jewish and Ottoman. A presence that exists even in my language. Each culture fortified itself, passed on, and left something. I am a son of all those fathers, but I belong to one mother. Does that mean my mother is a whore? My mother is this land that absorbed us all, was a witness and was a victim. I am also born of the Jewish culture that was in Palestine ... (in Kimmerling and Migdal, 2003: 416) Darwish’s stance is also gendered, likening Palestine to a woman (however, it should be said that the grammatical gender for Palestine in Arabic is feminine).

Perspectivity Perspective is a well-established concept in studies of the phenomenology of language (Husserl, 1960), and it assumes that every utterance has a point of view. The impossibility of de-perspectivized language is also found in Foucault’s writing (Foucault, 1972; see also Baxter, 2003: 25). However, Foucault is not interested in the individual agent per se, but rather in the collective power relations which all members of a society are subject to, albeit with differential access, hence the use of the term ‘subject’ and not ‘person’ or ‘individual’ or ‘agent’ (as discussed earlier). The point of view is at all levels of human consciousness: a) the physical geographic (see Levelt, 1989) – for example, even in a description of a physical object such as a chair, two persons will

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describe it differently because they are not standing at the exact same spot at the same time in relation to the chair; the cognitive (Levelt, 1989) – for example, William James (1981 [1891]: 278) reminds us that no two minds are the same, while Marková (2003: 26–7), on the other hand, discusses how universal thinking in dichotomies seems to be (i.e. me and the others, we and us, etc.), thus perceiving the mind as dialogic in essence; the interactional – utterances are not produced in isolation from the utterances of other people (Graumann and Kallmeyer, 2002); the socio-historic – each individual will grasp an event differently from others because each individual is biographically uniquely located in relation to others, and in relation to historic events, therefore individuals experience the power affects differently; the cultural aspect, which concerns the ‘structure of the world system’ (Blommaert, 2005: 15).

To illustrate this cultural aspect, not long after September 11, a friend who is a professor at a university in Oklahoma and has a common Muslim name, was at the library for some routine visit and he had a routine request for one of the people there. Her response, to his amazement, was that she knows that where he comes from, men expect women to serve them, and that she wasn’t going to do that for him because he was in America. My friend was deeply insulted and requested an apology. The point of the story is that, at the micro-local level, the librarian’s perspective on what my friend was doing at the library could not escape the more macro-global relationship between the USA and Muslim countries. Perspective is always personal; however, it is the psychological reflection of a dialogically built conception of the world, of human relations at the interpersonal as well as at a more global ‘world system’ level. It is thus impossible to talk about discourse without talking about perspective. What follows from this is that perspective and discourse as a result, by definition must be dialogic (see O’Connell et al., 2004). Dialogism is understood within a Bakhtinian (Bakhtin, 1981) framework which engages all forms of human interaction (Linell, 1998: 47; see also Linell, 2005).

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The dialogic character of language, that is, the ability to defer meaning creates a window for protesting against hurtful usages, according to Judith Butler (1997; see also Salih, 2002). Butler argues that reclaiming a word empowers oneself. What Butler seems oblivious to is the fact that one cannot erase the history of the meaning of a word just by reclaiming it. For example, the word ‘nigger’ (Butler’s example): it will still be hurtful if used by a white person to address or refer to an AfricanAmerican person, even though the word has been reclaimed by many African-American rappers. It is because language use is ritualized and regularized through institutions. It is not up to an individual or a group to change the meaning of a hurtful word. Meaning is built dialogically, and it is, rather, how one (less powerful) group negotiates (discursively and semiotically) its positions in relation to the more dominant groups. In my opinion, reclaiming the word ‘nigger’ by African-American rappers opened up a discursive and semiotic space for dialogue between both groups. It is the dialogue between both groups which will bring about change (and which has changed the meaning in the case of the use of the word ‘nigger’) and not one group, and not merely reclaiming the word by the rappers as Butler might have suggested.

Traces or effects of perspectivity Earlier research (Suleiman and O’Connell, 2003, 2007, 2008) found the following discursive markers can be good indicators of perspectivity: number of syllables spoken, hedges, repetitions or false starts, and, particularly, pronoun reference and address forms and the use of non-standard forms in formal situations. Suleiman and O’Connell (2003, 2007, 2008) investigated both self-reference and other reference and looked for patterns of use. For example, studying a CNN interview with Colin Powell right before the US invasion of Iraq, they found a consistent use on Powell’s part of the pronoun ‘we’ to refer to the USA and its current allies, ‘they’ to refer to unidentified enemies. When Powell used ‘they’ to refer to allies, in other words, to ‘good’ people, it was always in reference to specific persons. The use of ‘they’ to describe undefined enemies served as method for dehumanizing the enemy. Powell also referred to the world in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them,’

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with ‘us’ being generally the USA and its allies – including Russia and Israel at that moment – and ‘them’ to include unidentified terrorists, as well as the collective mass of Palestinians and Iraqis (Suleiman and O’Connell, 2003). Further, Suleiman and O’Connell (2007) studied six interviews with Bill Clinton on major American networks after the release of Clinton’s autobiography (My Life) in 2004. Suleiman and O’Connell (2007) found a similar division of categories of people between ‘we,’ the good and civilized, and ‘they,’ the bad, uncivilized. Bill Clinton’s perspective (as well as Powell’s) is construed through a world structure of power relations between the West and the rest of the world, particularly the Muslim world, after September 11. The gendered nature of perspectivity is in many ways inevitable if we take into consideration the social role played by the sex of a subject. Suleiman and O’Connell (2008) intended to demonstrate through markers of perspectivity how the personal perspectives of Bill and Hillary Clinton are gendered. For example, Hillary Clinton used hedges such as ‘you know’ extensively in five interviews, a hedge often associated with women’s speech. On the other hand, Bill Clinton does not use this hedge at all in five comparable interviews with the same interviewers (both were interviewed a year apart upon the releases of their respective memoirs, by the same interviewers and the same networks). Another difference is Hillary Clinton’s use of ‘standard’ forms of American English, in comparison to Bill Clinton’s prevalent use of southern regional markers, a difference which is also generally attributed to gender differences in sociolinguistic research. The differences in the markers of perspectivity between Bill and Hillary Clinton demonstrate how socially embedded gendered roles are. It seems that both were working from within an understanding of idealized forms of language which are associated either with women’s talk or men’s talk. Foucault (1984) already captured the notion of the impossibility of a de-perspectivized language. To him: Language as a system does not represent experience in a transparent and neutral way but always exists within historically specific discourses. These discourses are often contradictory,

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offering competing versions of reality, and serving different and conflicting power interests. Such power interests reside within large-scale institutional systems such as the law, justice, government, the media, education and the family. Thus it is a range of institutional discourses that provides the network by which dominant forms of social knowledge are produced, reinforced, contested or resisted. (cited in Baxter, 2003: 25) One should not conclude from this that all perspectives are equally valid, rather they could be considered as a resource for opening discussion for multiple perspectives, which in its turn can open the space for dialogue and more tolerance and understanding (Baxter, 2003: 38). Nor does this entail that, because perspectivity is dialogic, this should mean no conflict is possible. To the contrary: it is precisely because power effects are unequally distributed, and because the location of subjects is unequal in relation to power and to each other, that disagreement, misunderstanding and sometimes conflict arise (see Linell and Jönsson, 1991; Marková, 2003: 116; Marková and Foppa, 1991: 261; Wodak, 1996). To be able to be understood – that is, to have a voice – depends on one’s location in a certain social power relation (Blommaert, 2005: 4). In other words, voice concerns ‘ways in which people make themselves understood’ (Blommaert, 2005: 68). Blommaert continues: ‘we can say that every difference in language is a difference in social value, which is nestled in a particular order of indexicality’ (Blommaert, 2005: 69). Therefore: ‘voice in the era of globalization becomes a matter of the capacity to accomplish functions of linguistic resources translocally, across different physical and social spaces’ (Blommaert, 2005: 69). Blommaert warns that differences commonly provide the basis for conditions of inequality (2005: 71). On the voice of Palestinians as a collective, Edward Said often complained about its general disregard in the West (see for example, Said, 1996). Said attributes this neglect, to put it simply, to the historic relations between Europe and the East. I will illustrate the meaning of the silencing of a voice, through an example at a more interpersonal level. A few years ago I taught Middle East classes at a university in Oklahoma. In one particular instance, the university invited a well-known

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scholar of Islam from another American university. A colleague of mine (let’s call him A and call myself C) came to me after the lecture and said the following: A: What do you think of the lecture? C: I think it was great. It is what I try to do in class. You cannot explain what is going on the Muslim world today without addressing the history of the region. A: Yeah. People over there are stuck with the past. I felt very angry at the remark and at being, yet again, misunderstood. Why? I took it in the context of post-September 11 American society. My interlocutor knew the answer to his question before he even approached me, and I needn’t have opened my mouth because there was no dialogism. Whatever I said confirmed to him what he already knew. I consider myself to be lacking voice in that particular instance, not out of a lack of articulation, or a will to articulate and communicate my thoughts clearly, but rather because I was facing an already built wall of intensified prejudices after September 11. In this regard, G.H. Mead argues that: Language does not simply symbolize a situation or object which is already there in advance; it makes possible the existence or the appearance of that situation or object, for it is a part of the mechanism whereby that situation or object is created. (1962 [1934]: 78) Language must be taken in its historical cultural context (Marková and Foppa, 1991: 259). In addition, and as the previous example illustrates, voice in language must be understood in a framework of ‘epistemic responsibility’ (Rommetveit, 1991: 267). Further, ‘asymmetrical distribution of epistemic responsibility amounts to depriving the dialogic participants of their humanity and treating them as physical objects rather than fellow human beings’ (Marková and Foppa, 1991: 267). This notion of ‘epistemic responsibility’ has a profound influence on the production of ‘discourse’ considering the global condition of the ‘war on terror’ and what it does to people who happen to be standing

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in the way of the ‘war of terror’ by merely belonging to the ‘wrong’ national or religious group. In addition, Linell and Luckman (1991:3) argue that differences in the right to develop topics can result in different allocations of epistemic responsibility, and therefore can result in reproducing and maintaining already existing conditions of inequality. In other words, this can lead to simply a loss of voice. I would like to bring in a more concrete example of ‘epistemic responsibility.’ Ifat Maoz, a professor at the Hebrew University, works on dialogue groups between Israelis and Palestinians from Israel among the student body at the Hebrew University. She observed that there are more Israeli Jewish students who participate in these dialogue groups than there are Palestinians. Her perception of the situation is not that Palestinian students do not want dialogue; rather, they have more things to worry about than their fellow Jewish students when in face-to-face interaction. They are concerned about the power relation in the group dynamics. To them, Jews have a state, and they see themselves at odds with, or at best subordinate to, the state. But, above all, Maoz observed that when the issues raised are too sensitive, such as questions about one’s loyalty and feelings about Palestine or Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, the students opt for silence. In other words, Arab students kept silence to object to control tactics and aggressive questions directed at them by Jews and showing thus that they [the Arab students] will not cooperate with this agenda of pressing them to the wall with questions such as ‘are you faithful to the state of Israel’ etc. (Email correspondence, January 15, 2008; see also Maoz, 2001) Silence in this case empowers the person. By not talking, the person registers dissent, disagreement or the feeling that the conversation perhaps has gone too far and therefore, if it continues, the person may be compromising her/his already volatile ‘epistemic responsibility.’ When I taught at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, across the hallway from my office was the office of Benny Morris. Morris

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(included among the revisionist Israeli historians) had just given a number of interviews and articles to Israeli and US newspapers, in which he denied being revisionist in the sense of being post-Zionist. He defended Zionism and called the Palestinian Nakba insignificant historically in its dimensions. He also interviewed Ehud Barak for the New York Review of Books, who at the failure of Camp David talks in 2001 and the start of the al-Aqsa Intifada blamed Yasser Arafat for everything. I wanted so much to talk to Morris about his interviews and articles, but my heart betrayed me at the door to his office. I was silent. Now, with the reflective distance of a few years spent in the USA, I understand that if I did talk to him I was compromising my epistemic responsibility. Silence – in other words, the refusal to engage linguistically – might not have been the worst option in this case. Further, if we accept that meaning is dialogic, what follows is that it is never final and fixed, but rather always in a state of flux and ‘deferral,’ as Derrida calls it. Rommetveit (2003), in that respect, talks about words as having the potential for meaning because of their dependence on the dialogic and perspectivized context of the utterance. This notion is also very powerful for Bakhtin (1981). What is missing in Rommetveit’s and Bakhtin’s (but not in Derrida’s) work is an endorsement of the asymmetrical power effects leading to differential ‘epistemic responsibilities.’ In Rommetveit’s argument, it is the asymmetrical basis of knowledge which leads to losing one’s voice, but, as the example I gave earlier, of the short exchange between me and my colleague at a university in Oklahoma, shows, it was not asymmetry in knowledge which led to my loss of voice, rather, it was the micro-reproduction of the macro-power relation between the USA and Muslim countries.

Perspectivity and the researcher’s position Modeling social sciences after the physical sciences reinforced the idea that anything could be studied objectively and with impartiality. If we accept that language production is always perspectivized, then we must accept that we cannot have an impartial science, oblivious to the cultural, political and historic forces that shape human knowledge.

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Many researchers argue that their research is scientific because it is replicable (Tannen, 1989). For example, Tannen often claimed to her students that her method is ethnographic, based on observations and on detailed analysis of transcribed conversations, and therefore anyone could do the same observation and replicate her research. This objective of scientific research is unattainable because it undermines the power of the interpretation of the subject matter. Tannen is an American linguist, a product of Berkeley and its feminist environment of the 1970s. She brings to her research her own perspective, informed, of course, professionally through Berkeley’s academic expertise, but also through her being an American woman entering adulthood in the 1970s. I cannot replicate her perspective, but I can still do valid research on American society if I wish to, having studied and lived there for many years. With regard to Middle East studies, Edward Said reminds us, any study of the Middle East coming from a Western institution carries with it a long tradition of an Orientalist body of knowledge, that is, perceiving the Orient through a prism of (mis)representations carried from one generation of Western scholars to another. My contention is that, without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously systemic discipline by which European culture was able to manage and even produce the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically and imaginatively during the postEnlightenment period. Moreover, so authoritative a position did Orientalism have that I believe no one writing, thinking or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations on thought and action imposed by Orientalism. (1978: 3) Being a Middle Easterner, studying and writing about the Middle East in the USA entails working out one’s own position in relation to the thick forest of Western scholarship, which often conflicts with one’s own experiential native knowledge. One cannot ignore the fact that: ‘Once again representation becomes significant, not just as an academic

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or theoretical quandary, but as a political choice’ (Said, 2003b: 314). This all leads to a discussion of voice, and who has the right to say what to whom, as well as the ability to be understood (Blommaert, 2005: 4). In other words, it concerns the epistemic responsibility discussed earlier. Nawal El-Saadawi (1997a) complains that, while teaching in the USA after a career of writing about women in Egypt, she was not allowed to teach theoretical classes. That was, in her opinion, preserved for the US scholar who has the ability to master theory. She, as representing the Other (to a US audience) was only valuable as long as she talked about her personal experience as a woman from the Middle East, as well as about the experience of women from that part of the world. On the other hand, theory was left for the US women professors whose expertise is the Middle East. They are the ones who can lift the discussion from the empirical to the theoretical abstract level, but not Saadawi. In other words, Saadawi was not deemed to be epistemologically responsible in the same way her US hosts were. Saadawi interprets this difficult relationship between her and her US hosts as a reflection of the global condition of inequality between the USA (and the West) and people from the Third World. In addition, as mentioned above, Saadawi says that she goes to conferences in the West, she is expected to talk about her identity, but Western women are not expected to talk about theirs, which is a further indication of inequality. I will elaborate further on these points in Chapter 6, when I discuss Western scholarship and women from the Middle East.

Feminism and discourse analysis Research on discourse and gender generally has the objective of exposing gender inequalities and therefore it is feminist (Coates, 2004: 220). Adopting a Foucauldian understanding of discourse and power, researchers assume that discourse ‘involves the construction of conflicting subject positions’ (Simpson, 1997: 204). The question which follows from this is ‘how does language construct the conflicting subject positions which become labeled as gender differences’ (Simpson, 1997: 204) and, by implication, I add cultural and other social differences? Social subjects are not understood as totally passive, but rather

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as ‘capable of acting as agents and amongst other things of negotiating their relationship with the multifarious types of discourse they are drawn into’ (Fairclough, 1992: 61, cited in Simpson, 1997: 221). To Cameron (1997: 35–36), and many others, it is not sufficient just to point to gender differences without addressing the conditions of inequality from which these differences originate and take meaning. However, power affects subjects in different ways. Individuals ‘are never outside cultural forces or discursive practices but always “subject” to them’ (Baxter, 2003: 25). Identities are constructed, negotiated or sustained through culturally approved subject positions. They are made available to individuals ‘by means of the particular discourses operating within a given discursive context’ (Baxter, 2003: 25).

Conclusion Two basic assumptions about language use guided this chapter: that language use is dialogic and perspectivized. This leads to an examination of what language is through the lens of social forces and power relations that are shaped and at the same time shape language. It is commonly held that these power relations lead to conditions of inequality among people and groups, and therefore researchers often find themselves ideologically committed, in varying degrees, to social change, in their studies of language. In addition, researchers concerned with social theory occupy themselves with the constraints of human agency, thus the preference of the use of ‘subject’ rather than ‘self,’ in discussion of the formations of identity. Lastly, since scholars use language to express their knowledge of their field, the question is: ‘How perspectivised is their scholarship?’ Further, a theory of language which engages perspectivity as a conceptual tool is able to bridge the micro-interactional production and reception of an utterance to the larger macro-dynamics among groups, such as the global situation between North and South, and the power relations between groups. Often researchers of language concerned about the micro-local level of analysis neglect the larger dynamics which play a significant role in interaction among members of different groups as for example, Tannen’s (1994) analysis of gender relations

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(see Blommaert, 2005). On the other hand, researchers of language using the Critical Discourse Analysis approach focus on the macro picture, to the neglect of the micro-local level (Blommaert, 2005, see Fairclough, 1992; Wodak, 2005, and others). Perspectivity is able to bridge both because it is the psychological manifestation of a dialogically (in a broadest sense) established point of view. I wish for a theory of language that explains to me how a colleague, who is otherwise decent, sensitive and politically correct, could casually say, for example, that Arabs breed like rabbits. Perspectivity is then the simultaneous micromacro levels of ‘what’s going on’ in an interaction. Both the macro and micro are interdependent, and it seems that no other linguistic theory so far has been able to demonstrate that interdependency.

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Life is lived forward and understood backward. (Kierkegaard, cited in Rommetveit, 1974: 99) This chapter discusses the interviewees’ response to my opening question of ‘What motivates you towards activism?’ All of my respondents gave me biographical details of how they started their activities, what brought about their awareness, socially, geographically, demographically and politically. They generally linked their awareness to particular historic events which coincided with their personal growth. A number gave me details of where and when they were born, and where and when they came into adulthood. They reflected on their coming to awareness about the conflict through the lenses of what they were doing, for example in 1948 or in 1967, and how these events affected their sense of self and their decision to become politically active. In other words, a majority of my interviewees located themselves in relation to the other in terms of place and time of birth, and in terms of coming to mature adulthood in place and time. That is, the interviewee’s perspective on the conflict and their ontological understanding of what is going on is anchored spatially and temporally to two significant autobiographical moments: birth and entering adulthood. Interviewees gave accounts of the historic events of these two moments and how these events shaped their consciousness of the conflict. They also gave an account of their physical geographic location at

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both of these two moments. Following these accounts is a discussion of the question: ‘Where does Palestine end temporally and spatially and where does Israel start?’ The literature discussed earlier tells us that the relationship of self towards the other is central to a theory of perspective (see Suleiman and O’Connell, 2008 for example) and that pronouns are the core element in locating the self; they are ‘shifters’ (Jakobson, 1984, cited in Linde, 1993: 112), constantly shifting the perspective depending on the here and now, and thus locating self in relation to other at once in place and time. In other words, this is a discussion of ‘I’ in place and time. A person’s world is constructed spatially, temporally and socially – through his or her relationship with others. Thus it is the ‘I’ in space and time and in relation to the ‘other’ (Schutz, 1970: 135–6) and it is open to new possibilities through a constant flow of experience, because it belongs to the ‘ontological experience’ (Schutz, 1970: 135) of being human. This by itself results in one’s perspective being always unique and personal. It is the psychological state of a socially constructed sense of self.

Anchoring self in time and place Generally, in response to my first question ‘What motivates you personally, towards activism?’ interviewees described where and when they were born, and what happened politically at the time they were growing up. I will start with an excerpt from Amneh Badran, the Palestinian activist from Jerusalem, who was directing the Jerusalem Center for Women which cooperates with an Israeli organization, the Bat Shalom (Daughters of Peace) under the umbrella of the Jerusalem Link, when I interviewed her. Badran for example locates herself as being born after the 1967 war, coming of age during the first intifada in 1987, and witnessing as a child the 1982 war on Lebanon and the consequent massacres of Sabra and Shatila. Excerpt # 1 AB: You know, I was born after the occupation of 1967. Being raised in a house that is very much into speaking politics, later

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on, being active. I’m the youngest, of seeing my brother active in the first intifada, I’ve seen my mother very much into what is happening around, watching the news, being in an atmosphere whereby I felt that there is something wrong, and I have to understand. I started to question as, at an early age of my life. I think the first intifada was real, a real turning point in my life, because at that stage I was almost 17 years old, and, I was able to, to be a bit active, but what made me feel that there is something really wrong, was, it was the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. I was 12 and I felt what is injustice, and what is being left alone, ’cause I, I, I, no one was helping the Palestinians there, and I felt that we are the only ones who are, feeling with our brothers and sisters there, so this, this, this made me feel very, very sure of the feeling of, of injustice. Later on, I felt that I had to be active in the first intifada. I was let down by the fact that we didn’t achieve our aspirations through the intifada, and I was let down by Oslo, and, I didn’t want to, to give up, and to being let down, so I wanted to do a small piece. Lines 1–6 are syntactically structured with the repetition of the gerund, in ‘being raised in a house ... later being active ... seeing brother active ... watching the news’ gives the meaning of simultaneity (see Carranza, 2003). In other words, while she was growing up, political events happened which shaped the way she thinks about the conflict. The year 1967 is part of Badran’s consciousness of who and what she is, even though she was born after 1967 and she has no personal recollection of 1967. Nonetheless, the year 1967 established a political order with significant consequences for Badran, being from Jerusalem. She tells me that at a young age she started wondering about what was going around her politically (lines 4–7). In this regard, Edward Said (1979: 155) notes that the Palestinian people have a heightened sense of self because of the extraordinary conditions they have had to face, and thus they demonstrate a deep sense of self-reflexivity. Badran continues to explain that the break of the first intifada (in 1987) was a real turning point in her political awareness. ‘I was almost 17’ (line 9), but the year 1982 was also

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important politically to her: ‘it was the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. I was 12’ (lines 11–12). In other words, these two political events were crucial with regard to her self-awareness, in addition to being born after 1967: the intifada in 1987 and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It is noticeable that there is a break in the chronological order of events. I attribute this to a personal perspective which perceives temporal events from a spatial point of view. The intifada was closer physically. Badran was living the experience of the intifada first hand, whereas the Lebanon experience was physically removed and observed through the media, but nonetheless not without a significant impact. In addition, there is a redundancy of details about her age at each stage: born after 1967, being 12 at the time of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and being 17 at the outbreak of the first intifada. The temporal details brought to the picture she is drawing of her political self-awareness are perhaps instrumental in establishing a perspective of self being deeply rooted in the events which shaped the conflict and thus being in a position to act on her understanding in an attempt to personally contribute to the change of the situation for better. I, as her interlocutor, could do the math. I don’t need these details about her age, but her provision of this detailed anchoring of self in time and in relation to important political events serves the purpose of locating the self as worthy of taking action. The details, in addition, may give a sense of ‘verisimilitude’ (Tannen, 1989: 140–1) with regard to the reception of what she has to say. This may also firmly establish a ‘high involvement style’ (Tannen, 1989: 140–1), a conversational rhetorical style which, Tannen argues, is characteristic of both Jewish and Arab women (1989: 209). Anna De Fina (2003: 368), while studying the narrative of Mexican immigrants in the USA, argues that she found a prevalence of details of space over time. De Fina attributes that to the sense of incoherent self after a dislocation in space, having moved physically from one place to another, and having to endure terrible conditions while trying to cross the borders between Mexico and the USA. I find the opposite to be true in Badran’s talk. There is a prevalence of time orientation over space, and this has to do with the fact that she was not physically

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removed from her place of birth. She is not a refugee. Rather, her place of birth went through fundamental political changes which deeply affected her personal sense of self. The trauma is perspectivally shaped temporally rather than spatially. In the next excerpt, I will analyze the discourse of Gila Svirsky, a Jerusalem Israeli American, co-founder of Women in Black and Machsom Watch, and the Coalition of Women for Peace. Svirsky physically made the move from the USA, her place of birth, to Israel. Excerpt # 2 GS: ... I was born in the United States, which schools were Yeshivas, and all around me was very anti-Israeli sentiment. This was in the 1950s, my beginning of school. I was born in 1946, so I’m 58 today. My parents were Orthodox. My school was anti-Israel, but my mother was a rabid Zionist, and I had to explain my parents. Both were born and brought up in Europe. My mother came to Palestine in 1935 because of a deep love of Zionism. She was a member of Betar, and followed Jabotinsky, so you well know that that represents the right wing, the strong right wing of Zionism. My father was much more liberal, but when I grew up, my mother was always teaching me, ‘Israel, Israel, Israel,’ and my schools were anti-Israel, and then I went to a Zionist Nationalist Orthodox camp, summer camp, and there I really got a big dose of Zionism, and for me, it became evident as time went by that I wanted to live in Israel. I moved here actually in 1966, which was a year before the Six Day War, and after the war, I, I went back for a few months to finish my degree, my BA degree in philosophy, at Brandeis, but, when I returned to Israel, I was very nationalist, and I wanted to join my friends who were, settling in the Gush Etzion area, and I actually went there, for a weekend, and said to them, ‘Maybe I’ll come back; right now, I want to finish my studies,’ and I came back to Jerusalem to finish my studies. This was, in 1972 more or less, and then through the course of the 1970s, I married, I had children, and the settlement movement became very, very strong.

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Svirsky, while an immigrant herself, does not provide in her interview with me the precise place in the USA she immigrated from. Rather, she provides more precise description of where she moved to, in Israel after her marriage: Gush Etzion (line 20), and Jerusalem (line 22). In excerpt #3, Svirsky continues her story. Excerpt #3 At the same time, I found more and more that I was not comfortable with their politics. I, it took me a long time. This is not an easy passage, but I can tell you my husband was a strong Labor voter, Labor Party, and little by little, I, like a good wife, I mean that I was not a feminist in those years, and like a good wife I thought to myself, you know, tsk, ‘He’s probably right. He knows more than I do about these matters,’ and slowly, I moved away from voting for the national religious party, and I started to vote for Labor Party. I also, my degree of religiosity went down through that period, and I became actually less interested with politics, and much more interested in having my children, and raising them, and being a mother. Then in the 1980s, in the middle, mid 1980s, my husband and I divorced, and I began to think independently about my life, and my views, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt comfortable with a point of view that was much more liberal, than even his point of view. I felt much by then, I was no longer Orthodox, no longer even practicing anything about Judaism by then, I was probably if I remember correctly already very angry at the Orthodox who seemed to be running our lives, and I began to take an active interest in some of the Peace Now activities, in the peace movement. This was in the period also that I was asked to be the director, at this period I became director of the New Israel Fund ... and so, I really began to see, I began to travel around the country, and I saw the problems. I went to battered women’s shelters. I visited the Bedouin in the Negev. I saw what was happening in Umm al-Fahim. Everywhere I went, I could see that there were serious problems with democracy in Israeli society, so

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this was a very strong education for me, and then the intifada broke out, in December 1987. My friend said that she was going to join, a vigil that was being held every week, and I said, ‘OK, it sounds like a, tell me if it’s good or not,’ so she came back and she said, it was a very good feeling to be there, and I should come too, and so I joined the Women in Black vigil. It was the third week that they were standing. The above details are in Svirsky’s story of her motivation for activism, as it sets her in an experience inside the settler movement in the West Bank and not outside of it (by simply having lived on a settlement in Gush Etzion). Another spatial detail is where she visited while working for the New Israeli Fund in the 1980s: Umm Al-Fahim (lines 26–7), an Arab village; Negev, where she visited Bedouin families (line 26); and battered women’s shelters (lines 25–6) which she doesn’t provide a specific place for, in other words, women’s shelters could have crossed the national-ethnic boundaries which have construed her perspective because they could be Arab or Jewish. Unlike De Fina (2003)’s findings about immigrants with regard to the prevalence of space over time orientation, I find a simultaneous presentation of self by Svirsky in both time and place. Svirsky tells me ‘I was born in 1946, so I’m 58’ (at the time of the interview, line 3, excerpt #2), ‘my mother came to Palestine in 1935’ (lines 6–7), ‘I moved here actually in 1966, which was a year before the Six Day War’ (lines 15–16), ‘I came back to Jerusalem ... in 1972’ (lines 22–3), ‘through the course of the 1970s, I married, and I had children’ (lines 24–5), ‘in the 1980s, in the middle, mid 1980s, my husband and I divorced’ (line 13, excerpt #3), ‘at this period, I became director of the New Israel Fund’ (lines 22–5), ‘and then, the intifada broke out, in December 1987’ (lines 29–30). Note that the above-mentioned temporal details coincide with personal life changes as well as historic events in Israel/Palestine. I know that the Six Day War brokeout in 1967, and I know of its significance for both Arabs and Jews. She knows that I know. The purpose of the temporally detailed account is to locate self in relation to this very major event in the region.

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Two personal accounts get detailed temporally: getting married and having children, and then, later, getting a divorce. Getting a divorce marks a new sense of self-awareness and a new role in public and professional life. This is anchored once again to another major historic event which is the outbreak of the first intifada. Svirsky’s personal perspective, just like Badran’s, is anchored through locating self in relation to historic events, and in Svirsky’s case, events which happened in the Israeli–Palestinian context and not the US context where she was born. This last point with regard to Svirsky is an apparent departure from what, for example, Mike Baynham (2003) found in his studies of narratives of Moroccan immigrants in Britain. His informants anchored their experience of ‘dislocation’ (2003: 347) to historic events which happened in their mother country prior to the immigration, both at the moment they were born and while they were growing up. Svirsky’s perspective is tied to historic events which happened in Israel when she immigrated, but her connection to the place started even before she was born because of her mother’s temporary immigration to Palestine. Further, while Baynham explains the propensity of immigrants’ accounts to temporal detail tied to historical events as resulting from an experience of physical dislocation because of immigration, I am left to speculate that, with regard to Svirsky (and to Badran as well), something else might be going on: namely, the conflict experience is so intense and exhausting that, while self may not be dislocated spatially (even though it is in the case of Svirsky), self is still disoriented because of the high demands of the situation, hence the need to locate and relocate self temporally. In addition, locating self in relation to other members of the family (mother, father, husband and children in the case of Svirsky, and mother and brother in the case of Badran), as well as to other friends (in the case of Svirsky, a friend introduced her to a Women in Black vigil, lines 31–5, excerpt #3) might be a gendered aspect of the construction of an understanding of the conflict. I did not find a similar connection to other family members in the accounts of any of the men I interviewed. In addition, Baynham (2003) tells us that he found that Moroccan women immigrants tend to describe their location to other

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family members, but the men don’t. As for Svirsky’s moving experience in joining Women in Black, she says: Excerpt #4 I found this was a very powerful experience for me, and deepened my education, deepened my political education, because from them, I began to see, a lot about what takes place in Palestine, by visiting Palestinian cities within, and families, and I also began to understand the very deep problem in Israeli society, of the attack against women, gender, violence against women, just from standing there, as a woman expressing our views, and to have so many men come and attack us, because we were women. They didn’t say, ‘Your politics is wrong.’ They said, ‘You’re a whore. You’re a prostitute. You haven’t slept with the right guy, or you wouldn’t believe what you believe.’ This was a very strong education, in understanding that they were, did not regard us, as equals. They regarded us as bodies that should be active in the in bed, and in the kitchen, and with the children, but have no right to stand on the street. So all of this was part of my growing education, and I have to say, even growing politicization, at some point, I saw more and more things, as I earned the trust of people I worked with. I traveled to see atrocities that took place in the territories. I visited trials, to see how Palestinians were not given justice in trials. I spent time with families who were innocent of all wrongdoing, and felt the ways in which they were being hurt, terribly, by the occupation, so I, my own activism deepened. I became, I left the foundation, because I wanted to be active. It wasn’t enough for me to be giving out money. I wanted to be on the streets. I became director of Bat Shalom, and was there for two years, and then I left them. The next intifada broke out, and I founded the Coalition of Women for Peace and that brings us to today. Svirsky is convinced that she and other women activist are attacked not because of their politics but rather because they are women, and shouldn’t be in public places, voicing their political discontent publicly.

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In the next excerpt, I will analyze the locating of self in the discourse of Shulamit Aloni, a veteran Israeli politician from Tel Aviv, who was a minister in the 1990s, and a human rights lawyer and activist who formed the leftist party Ratz, which later merged with a splinter of the Labor Party to form Meretz. Excerpt #5 SA: ... Well, all my life, I was active in fighting for human rights, and for a written consideration in the bill of rights, I’m, I got the Israeli prize, because all my life that is, what I am doing, and, when I say human rights, it’s, it means that every man, woman, and child regardless sex, race tatatatata, nationality, is entitled for, for basic human rights, which we don’t have in Israel, and, that’s why I was active all the time for peace, together with the Israeli Arabs, who were discriminated against, and are still discriminated against, and then after the Six Days War, I was among those, who said that we should make peace, and give back the territories, so here is the story, and then in ’73 I estab[lished], I left now, then I left the Labor Party, because of Golda Meir, and because of the, that, that she didn’t want to really, really, to give in, and she thought that, there she said that, ‘there are no Palestinians,’ because once she was a Palestinian. OK I was a Palestinian too, but now I am an Israeli, so what are the Palestinians? How can she say there are no Palestinians? So this was one of her beautiful saying, things. The other thing that she said, she cannot forgive the Arabs that they make us, to kill them, because we are always the victim, you see. They, the mentality which they wanted to, to raise in the Israeli public, it’s again the fear, and again the fear, and the feeling that we are the ultimate victim, so you can hear a woman saying, a prime minister saying, that she cannot forgive them that they make us to kill them, so she is the victim, you understand? She is killing the others, and she is the victim, so I established the civil rights, and peace movement, as a party which in the beginning, it was Ratz and then it became Meretz. Here is my story, in a nutshell.

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CS: Do you think that successive governments in Israel succeeded in what Golda Meir’s vision? SA: Now, the majority of the Israelis, including the Labor Party and the right wing, and the left wing, wing they, they wanted to get more and more territory, on behalf of the Palestinians [i.e. from Palestinians], and once we had a Prime Minister, Levy Eshkol. He said that we want the dowry without the bride, which means we want the land without them, and, we have a legitimate party. They call it a legitimate party, in parliament whose flag is to transfer for the Palestinians, the Likud men that men. It’s not in the Likud it’s a special party. They called it, I have forgotten their name. Aloni, a lawyer by training, asserts that advocating human rights was something she has always done (lines 1–4), thus drawing a picture of someone with a lifelong dedication to human rights. In addition, she anchors her own perspective in relation to the perspective of other Israeli politicians from different political strands, and she does that using constructed dialogue (Tannen, 1989). Three politicians are singled out: Golda Meir (lines 12–13), Levy Eshkol (lines 34–7) and Benny Elon (lines 2–3, excerpt #6). The first two are two former prime ministers (Eshkol from 1963 to 1969, and Meir from 1969 to 1974, thus, the 1967 war was conducted under Eshkol’s premiership and the 1973 war was under Meir’s premiership; both would be described as Labor Zionists), and the last is a younger-generation member of the Knesset, and a former tourism minister from Moledet (Homeland), a right-wing party which advocates expelling or transferring all Palestinians from Israel/Palestine. In reference to Meir, Aloni cites her as saying ‘there are no Palestinians’ (line 15, excerpt #5). This may be the most commonly cited quote by an Israeli politician, and it is probably reported by Aloni to make a point of how short on vision Israeli politicians have always been. Aloni also provides her own reaction to the quote, along with what might have been Meir’s rationalization of the denial of the existence of Palestinians, ‘because once she [Meir] was a Palestinian’ (line 6), ‘OK I [Aloni] was a Palestinian too and now I am an Israeli’ (lines 16–20). Aloni cites Meir again, this time indirectly, that she

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cannot forgive the Palestinians for making her kill them (lines 19–20). This point again is brought to illustrate the narrow vision of politicians as early as Meir, being driven by a mindset of victimhood and encouraging this sense of victimhood with the public (lines 20–3). The second politician Aloni quotes in constructed dialogue is Levy Eshkol, who said ‘we want the dowry without the bride’ (line 35) – note here the Orientalist par excellence feminization of the Palestinian people by Eshkol. Aloni provides an explanation of a perspective of a prime minister who wanted the land without the people. Note that the chronological order of who was prime minister first is broken as Eshkol preceded Meir as prime minister. Aloni explains that this mentality is not merely a past mentality, but is still alive among youngergeneration politicians such as Benny Elon and his Moledet party. Excerpt #6 CS: ... The Kahana party? SA: It is not the Kahana. It’s what was, now, it’s Benny Elon, and Ze’evi, but they called him Gandhi, is the leader of them, to transfer the Palestinians, and, CS: Yes. SA: Benny Elon who is now their leader once told me, ‘if you are not happy to transfer them, so we make their life so miserable that they will transfer themselves.’ Anyhow, I was just last week again in the occupied territory, and what they do is really, they make their life miserable, miserable. They take their land. They kill, they take their, their sheep, donkey. They, they destroy whatever they build. They, they uproot their trees, and it is a terrible situation. Nothing to be proud of, so here you have my story, so I built the party, and I was very active in all the peace movements, some of them, leading some of them. I went with others et cetera. After an unsuccessful search for the name of the right-wing party which advocates transfer of the Arabs from the land of Israel (lines 3–4), Aloni singles out Benny Elon, the leader of Moledet party who is quoted directly as saying to Aloni ‘if you are not happy to transfer

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them, so we make their life so miserable that they will transfer themselves’ (lines 7–8). The vision of these three politicians is used rhetorically to make an evaluative picture of inequality and perhaps more than that. It seems by bringing these three people together, from different political times and different convictions, Aloni is making a picture of an underlying coherent general ideology of rejecting any Arab presence on the land now called Israel (see Pappé, 2006), something Aloni is in opposition to because the convictions and acts of the abovementioned three politicians are against human rights. Aloni’s perspective on the conflict is anchored in a very real concern for basic human rights, and it is built in contrast to the perspective of other politicians. It is therefore, tied less to time and place and more in relation to other people. One final word, with regard to Meir, Aloni says ‘you can hear a woman saying, a prime minister saying ...’ (line 23, excerpt #5). The correction from ‘a woman’ to ‘a prime minister’ is noteworthy. It is not Meir being a woman that is significant, but rather her being a prime minister (with such limited vision). This is in accord, generally, with Aloni’s vision that she is an advocate for human rights in their generality. She has never shown any inclination to single out women’s rights from human rights (see Sharoni, 1995: 103, among others). This also is more pronounced in my interview with her with regard to the question of whether she has an advantage over men in her work as a political advocate and a lawyer, as well as in lines 1–3 of excerpt #5. In spite of the prevalence of a discourse in which Aloni locates herself in relation to other politicians, she still singles out the 1967 war (lines 9–10, excerpt #5) as an event which pushed for further commitment. Goffman states, on the role of citing other people (1974: 504, in Ochs, 1997: 193): A tale or anecdote, that is, a replaying, is not merely any reporting of a past event. In the fullest sense, it is such a statement couched from the personal perspective of an actual or potential participant who is located so that some temporal, dramatic development of the reported event proceeds from that starting point. A replaying will therefore incidentally be something that listeners can empathetically insert themselves into, vicariously

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re-experiencing what took place. A replaying, in brief, recounts a personal experience, not merely reports on an event. This fits nicely the notion of dialogism, as every telling of a story gives it more depth and nuance in meaning. In other words, Aloni was demonstrating her political perspective to me (a Palestinian from Nazareth) through asserting her long commitment to equal rights in Israel through cooperation with Arab members of the Knesset, but in addition, through displaying the short-sighted vision of her colleagues with regard to state-building. The colleagues she cites are from different political convictions, and span generations, as Aloni’s career herself spans decades of political activism. In the next two excerpts, Naomi Chazan, a political scientist from the Hebrew University who was a Knesset member during the signing of the Oslo Accords, and Uri Avnery, a veteran Israeli peace activist and the honorary head of the Peace Bloc, also speak of a lifelong commitment to activism, thus casting a perspective of a coherent self with coherent goals. Excerpt #7 NC: I’ve been involved almost all my adult life, so it’s hard to remember why. It seems to be the natural thing to do. [Pause] I, I, I always have difficulty. I’m always asked that question. I always have difficulty, because I’ve always been doing, I, so in a sense, because I don’t think there is, a situation which I would consider to be just, or reasonable, and because I think it should be corrected, that’s basically what it’s all about, and I also think from purely Israeli perspective, I was born and brought up here, that, Israel won’t have a moment’s quiet, unless we have a peace agreement [laughter], so we have peace, so seemed to be the obvious thing to do. Naomi Chazan, like Shulamit Aloni, states that she had always been active, but in addition, she states ‘I was born and brought up here’ (line 8), that is, the deixis of ‘I’ in the ‘here’ and ‘then,’ which positions her as someone in a position to be a political advocate.

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In addition, Chazan demonstrates self-reflexivity by simply stating that she is often asked the question of what motivates her work (line 3), but she still finds it hard to answer the question. She is also aware of her perspective being an Israeli perspective (lines 7–8), thus she is not claiming a universal or comprehensive perspective, but being active obliges her to take into account the other’s perspective. As for Uri Avnery, his commitment goes as far back as 1946, as the next excerpt demonstrates. Excerpt #8 UA: ... I believed in an alliance between the Hebrew and the Arab national movements since I was very young. I started, I learned of a group which propagated this idea in 1946, before the war of 1948, and the war in ’48, in which I was a soldier, and I was wounded. I came to the conviction that we shall never have peace, if we do not recognize the Palestinian Arab nation, if they will not come about the Palestinian state next to Israel, so briefly after the war in ’48 in early ’49, I started my efforts to propagate this idea to some Arab friends, and in 1950 I took over a news magazine called Haolam Hazeh, Hatha al-Alam [Hebrew and Arabic respectively for ‘This World’], which had by the way for several years had Arab edition by this name, and in Haolam Hazeh, we spread this idea from 1950 on every week, so I’ve been involved in this from the beginning. My personal commitment derives from the feeling that as a soldier in ’48, I bear some responsibility for the future of the state of Israel, its character, its actions, and therefore I’m committed to influence this as much as I can. Uri Avnery, like Shulamit Aloni and Naomi Chazan, states that he was politically committed from a young age (line 2). This simple statement sets the activists in a moral order of commitment as well as showing their expertise and the worthiness of the work they are doing. Avnery, in addition, sets the years of his youth as formative: 1946 and learning about a group which advocates national rights for both Jews and Arabs (in lines 1–2); 1948 (line 4) and his involvement

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in the war as a soldier which helped him gain a particular perspective on the conflict (a perspective of mutual recognition and respect on the part of both the Arabs and Jews in the country); 1949 (line 8) and his personal activism to propagate the idea of two rightful nations; and consequently in the 1950s (line 9, the early years of the state of Israel) editing a journal both in Hebrew and Arabic which promotes the idea of national rights for two peoples. The chronological order is not broken as it was earlier with Shulamit Aloni and Amneh Badran. In the next excerpt, Yael Dayan, the deputy mayor of Tel Aviv at the time I interviewed her and a Knesset member during the Oslo Accords, omits the fact that she is the daughter of the defense minister during the Six Day War and focuses on the 1982 Lebanon war experience, when her father was no longer at the center stage of political and military events in the region, thus implicitly presenting a self coming to awareness on her own, outside the shadow of the patriarchal figure, that is her father (he died in 1981). Excerpt #9 YD: I think, most people are motivated by nature, for a better life. The difference between activists and passive people is not in the degree of their conviction, but in the degree of ability, political understanding, drive to get up and do something about it. I know thousands and thousands of people who think the same way I do, so, the activists are not unique. They are representatives in the sense that I don’t, I don’t think there was an event in my life that pushed me. I think the war in Lebanon in ’82 was a turning point that when Shalom Achskav, Peace Now, was founded, and that, I was a writer, I went into politics very late, but I was a writer of fiction but, I was active in demonstrations, and in journalism. I wrote a political column, very left, very peace in, and very, I would say almost aggressive, and then of course, we, we went through the national events. All activists, and each one interpreted them in a different way, but, we became stronger and stronger until ’92, when we won the elections with Rabin. It was then that I decided to run to parliament, and, it

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meant to translate my activism in the squares and in demonstrations, and small groups, and the, in the media, to turn it into, into office, where I will go, I will be one of a 120, really, in a decision-taking, a position, but, all my life I was of the idea that it’s not enough to think in a different, in a certain way, but you have to do something about it. Yael Dayan anchors her perspective to the war on Lebanon in 1982 (line 6) as well as her long career as a leftist-leaning writer. Another point is the joining Peace Now (Shalom Achshav, line 9), as well as joining the Knesset as a member of the Labor Party in 1992 (line 16). In the next excerpt, Ilan Pappé, a historian at Haifa University at the time I met him, locates himself at birth in the city of Haifa, a city with a majority of Jewish population since 1948, which has known harmony between its Arab and Jewish citizens. Excerpt #10 IP: ... I think my motive, motivation for being active comes from both my scholarly career, from a very early stage, in my academic career, I became interested in the history of Palestine, the Palestinian National Movement, and the more I discovered about the history, the more I wanted to be part of the movement that rectifies some of the, evils that had been done in the past, so that’s one level. The second level is that I was born in Haifa, a mixed city, and I was teaching, I went to school with some Arab, friends, and then I went to university with Arab students, and the reality around me was binational, so to speak and, and that by itself, also was pushing me towards, activity, in the field of reconciliation, understanding and so on. Pappé’s political consciousness was formulated because of an academic interest in Middle East history, but also because he was born in Haifa, a more tolerant city in general, politically speaking. He states, ‘I was born in Haifa’ (line 7). His other point of reference is going to the university (the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, though he doesn’t mention it by name, line 9) and meeting more Arab students there.

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In the next excerpt, Zahira Kamal, the Jerusalem Palestinian who was the former minister of women’s affairs at the Palestinian Authority, gives me a detailed account of her path towards activism. Excerpt #11 ZK: ... First of all, it is, as a person I have been, ya’ni [you know], politically motivated, because of our Palestinian cause, being, ya’ni, very, I did not immigrate, but part of my family has immigrated, from Lid, Yaffa. My father lost his job in, Ein Karem as a teacher, and you know, being all the time, under the pressure that there would be some shooting coming, because you know, I’m one who was born on ’45. I was 3 years old when ’48 Nakbeh happened, but I can say that I remember some things that happened. First of all, our house is in between, ya’ni, Wadi il-Joz, near Rockefeller Museum, so it’s really in the middle of, in between, where the Jordanian Sheikh Jarrah, and that Hebrew University and Hadassa. At that time, it wasn’t that big. It was small, but at that time, it was, ya’ni, the places where things are taking place. Second, it’s, my father decided that it is a risk to continue like this. My mother was pregnant with my sister Bida. He decided that OK, perhaps we can go to Jericho. It is much safer, and me and my mother, we went there. She was pregnant, and then it’s, we had, ya’ni, to come back here, in a long way, walking with my mother, because she cannot stay away on her own, ya’ni in Jericho, without knowing what’s going on with my father. Second, it’s, also I remember that we moved with our family, big family house, in Old Jerusalem, in which my mother delivered my sister, and there was a bomb that it came to that building, while she is delivering, and it was like a historic situation for everybody there, in all you can imagine, that each room perhaps it has 6 or 7 persons, living inside it, and then my father decided that we move to a village, little bit away of all that. It is near Ramallah, Silwad. Zahira Kamal demonstrates her self-reflexivity as a natural consequence of the events she had to deal with, events which started long before her birth, but nonetheless she had to deal with as a Palestinian (lines 1–2),

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‘I have been, ya’ni, politically motivated because of our Palestinian cause.’ This is reminiscent of Said’s (1979) above-mentioned statements that Palestinians are a highly self-reflective people. She locates herself physically at the time of birth: ‘I am one who was born on ’45, I was 3 years old when ’48 Nakbeh happened’ (lines 7–8). Note Kamal’s naming of Nakba in the Palestinian colloquial pronunciation as ‘Nakbeh’ and not ‘Nakba,’ as a measure of bonding with another Palestinian woman in this interview, even though the formal part of the interview was conducted in English. She specifies where she lived as a child in Jerusalem ‘Wadi il-Joz, near Rockefeller Museum’ (lines 9–10) which sets her house spatially at the borderline of the Hudna (truce, i.e. the 1949 Rhodes border agreement), at a seamline between what became the border between Israel and Jordan. She further explains, ‘so it is really between where the Jordanian Sheikh Jarrah, and that Hebrew University and Hadassa’ (lines 11–12). Her family moved to Jericho because it was safer (line 16), only to come back to the ‘big family house in old Jerusalem’ (lines 21–2), and then eventually they moved to a safer place in the village of Silwad near Ramallah (line 20). In the next excerpt, Kamal continues her story of the family leaving Jerusalem. Excerpt #12 So we went with a truck, and, we been on the back of the truck, with all the mattresses, and things we were taking with us, and at the time it wasn’t an easy trip. The roads were not paved to that village, which I loved too much, because I have a lot of memories in that village. I used to go with my father several times after that, when I was grown up and you know, even we have lot of friends there, but these memories ... during my study, as a student you know, there was a lot of clashing going on between Palestinians and between Israelis, and Jordanians. We are Jordanian citizens according to you know, what happened, the political situation that took place in the West Bank of Palestine. I became, what’s called, ya’ni, it is the West Bank of the Jordanian River, actually that’s the part that’s left from Palestine

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that became part of the Hashemite Kingdom, and so there was a lot of clashes taking place between Israelis, and you know the armed soldiers, that they were in the Hudna [truce] borders, so, ya’ni, I have been demonstrating, so I grew with the politics of that period. I studied in Egypt, in the time of Abdel Nasser, and the National Movement, and so on. I have been part of the Arab National Movement, Harakat al-Qawmiyyin al-Arab, and then after that part, of the Democratic Front, so it is my life, as a, ya’ni, a person. It was through that politics. I’m also a woman activist. I can say myself I’m also a feminist, and that because, also that I’m witnesses the suffering of woman, through different things perhaps sometimes personally. The other point in Kamal’s life which she describes is moving to Egypt to study (lines 18–19) during Gamal Abdel Nasser’s time and her political involvement with the Palestinian cause while there, and then coming back to continue with her activism through the Arab National Movement as well as getting engaged in women’s development, ‘I am also a woman activist. I can say myself, I am also a feminist’ (line 23). Kamal continues: Excerpt #13 I didn’t pass through all that kind of suffering, but I can see. One other thing, the difference between the age of my father, and my mother is very big. It is, she was 17 years old, when she was married to my father, who was on his 42, ya’ni 24 years difference, perhaps, you know, our relation with my father, he is my father. We can jump on his back. My mother, it is like you know, he is perhaps, ya’ni, she had a lot of respect, she had a lot of fears of him, perhaps sometimes, ya’ni, at a certain stage, we didn’t know why that it is the way it is, how she respected the husband, and what she was doing. It is that, but with the education, my father was believing in the education. I can see that the family, they were trying to you know, convince him of not sending me to the university in Egypt, as an example, not to spend the money on a

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daughter, that she might be married, and to leave the money for the boys, to study, they are your future, as an example, but you know, he was promising, and he kept his promise, as my father, so even he went with me, and at that time, he was 64. Several people thought that they can send their daughters with him too, to study while he is taking me to study there, so, ya’ni he was teacher. He was a respected person, so he can do the same, and while he is going and he can take them, ya’ni, take care of their application in the universities, the dormitories and that all that, and that’s what actually, what happened. When I came back, ya’ni, work is OK, and that unfortunately, my father passed away very soon, ya’ni and it was two years after my graduation, and I was the breadwinner of my family, and so it’s, ya’ni, I passed through some, ya’ni, circumstances which make me more believing in women rights, of education, of work and so on, of choice. At the teacher training college, I had several young woman that came with very high marks in college, but the family refused to send them to the universities, because they have younger brothers, that they are they got less grades in Tawjihi [matriculation], but because they are the boys they go to the university, and they go to the teacher college. This is something that also initiated me to work for woman issues. Kamal ties her perspective on activism to the specific biography of her family, her father who was a teacher and who was harassed by the Israeli authorities. Her father, the patriarch of the family, whom her mother feared, and she never understood why, her father who encouraged her to continue studying and made sure she did, his death after she came back from her studies in Cairo, and having to support the family from her own salary (lines 25–6), and her father who was much older than her mother: ‘she was 17 years old when she was married to my father who was on his 42, ya’ni, 24 years difference’ (lines 3–4). All these national and personal facts shaped her awareness. In other words, it is the national events surrounding a life of a woman born a few years before the Nakba and coming of age at the time of the Six Day War, when Jerusalem was occupied, interlaced with family circumstances: a

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very young mother married to a father who is much older, as well as a father who pushed Kamal towards further pursuing her studies, not discriminating against her right to learn just because she is a woman, the Arab nationalist atmosphere of Egypt at the time she was studying there, as well as the personal circumstances of having to work to feed the family after her father passed away shortly after she graduated from college. All these events, combined together, cemented a perspective of activism in two directions: for national rights as well as for women’s rights in Kamal’s own society. In the next excerpt Mahdi Abd Al-Hadi, another Jerusalemite (though his family comes from Nablus), who runs a Palestinian research center and is roughly Kamal’s age, reflects on his own experience. Excerpt #14 MAH: ... Many turning point, many many turning points, and my youth when I started in the early days, the student union on Jerusalem in the early ’60s, the Jordanians were against it as a regime. I was arrested and realizing what kind of culture in the prison; then later on, when Israel occupied Jerusalem 1967, I was arrested for a while then realized what kind of prison – the culture of prison has become one of the episodes in making one selfidentity, you come now to see that Palestinians today, the three and a half million Palestinians are living in the prison, so what is there in this prison – water electricity sewage education and head to maintain that identity – there is no freedom, there is no independence, there is no sovereignty, there is no flag, there is no recognition, but this is containment of one self-struggle for survival, and that was one of the turning points of course. Another turning point, of meeting others like scholars and knowing people like Edward Said, knowing that Islamic leaders, Christian leaders, many turning point in one’s life, which makes a person full of contradictions. In the early days we used to, about Yasser Arafat, in the morning, he is a charming elected national symbolic leader, but in the evening we used to say he is old, he’s weak, he is corrupted and he corrupts, this is the kind of contradiction

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Palestinian live dealing with the Arab world, then betrayed by the Arab world, living with the Israelis, then betrayed by the Israelis, dealing with regimes establishing another Arab regime in Palestine and not a national democratic progressive system. Abd Al-Hadi traces his activism to being a young student activist in the 1960s in Jerusalem against the Jordanian regime (lines 2–4), the 1967 war and his consequential arrest and imprisonment by the Israeli authorities (lines 5–6). Abd Al-Hadi also relates his awareness to meeting people such as Edward Said (lines 15–16), and Islamic and Christian leaders (line 16–17). He reflects that these gave him different if not contradictory perspectives from which he had to create a coherent story (lines 17–18), that is, like all Palestinians he had to juggle his positions among other Arab positions, as well as the Israeli position (lines 22–24). Abd Al-Hadi continues: Excerpt #15 Of course, there is lots of turning points, and again on the same line, you are human being. You got married, and maybe you can have an affair, and maybe in your 40s, you are someone, in the 50s, you are someone else, in the 60s, you are someone else. This kind of relationship, man’s woman relationship, does of course, of this personality knowing the other, troubling all over the world, seeing the others, maybe coming across somebody who is a Buddhist, and she or he comes to tell you, we cannot meet in this life, let’s meet in the other life. This kind of, of what you call a challenge. Why should I meet in another life? I want to meet in this life, you know, I want to enjoy this life. This is my life, and I want to eat it. I want to live it. This kind of feelings, people come across, which is might be a turning point. To add to this mixture, the ordinary regular growth that all human beings share such ‘maybe in your 40s, you are someone, in the 50s, you are someone else, in the 60s, you are someone else’ (lines 1–4), in addition to personal aging that might change humans (lines 4–5), their

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marital relations might change, and they might meet other people from other cultures with different convictions such as a Buddhist (line 8). In other words, it is both the natural physical self that matures and comes of age, as well as the national circumstances surrounding him which have shaped his unique perspective and his own awareness. In the next excerpt, Nabila Espanioly, a director of a childhood center in Nazareth, locates herself firmly in Nazareth, in spite of temporarily moving out of Nazareth in pursuit of higher education. Excerpt #16 NE: I was born in Nazareth. I was raised in Nazareth, so I was, brought up in a very protective family, and I learned in, the environment, Nazareth. You were born here. You know Nazareth. People know you more than you know yourself. I always say, ‘In Nazareth, you don’t have to even say “My name is Nabila Espanioly”.’ They know my father, and my grandfather. I didn’t know my grandfather, not my grandmother, and they know them well. They know everything ... I have a friend who says, I say, ‘I don’t know you, but I know something about you,’ because I, your, your family already, so this is it. This is Nazareth. This is where we are, so yeah, and, I went to high school here in Nazareth, and I finished my amateur* in the Franciscan girl school, then went to work a year, then went to university, in Haifa University, and in Jerusalem, first Haifa, first to start to enter to Haifa, and study in Haifa, and then to Jerusalem, and then in Germany, and I came back in ’87, so all these points, all these processes are actually the points. To Nabila Espanioly, the location of self in place (Nazareth) is prominent in her description of her motivation for activism. Nazareth is mentioned seven times in this short excerpt. She emphasizes the communal relations that tie her (and tie me too) to Nazareth. In other words, she locates herself in a place, in Nazareth, and in relation to the community, a close-knit community, where people knew her father, grandfather, grandmother. Espanioly ties her experience to two more cities – Haifa and Jerusalem – where she studied before she went off for

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further studies in Germany and came back to Nazareth (lines 15–17). The time reference is 1987 (line 16), the beginning of the first intifada. Espanioly’s perspective clearly accommodates me, the interviewer, as being from Nazareth, just like she is. In the next excerpts, Samira Khouri, a veteran activist from Nazareth, gives a detailed account of her self-awareness which pushed her towards action to the 1930s, the years of adolescence and early adulthood. Excerpt #17 SK: Well, from the beginning of my life after I finished the, my studies in women training college, in Jerusalem in that place, in that institute or college, I was acquainted to many women of the* al Filistine, in that time, and there was the beginning of the talks, and the discussion about the partition of Palestine that was in the 1944–45, in after the World War and from that time, we began to discuss together about the Palestinian issue, then in that time, the in ’47, then the teachers, well all of them are English. They left school, and they, we stayed without any teachers, or headmaster, or anybody, to take care for us there. Also came Arab teachers to continue the teaching here. We, we went afterwards, to our homes, and we didn’t come back because the situation was pretty bad, and there were troubles, between the Jews and Arabs, and the college was located in a quarter which is called Mi’a She’arim, between the Jews, and the Jews started to throw stones on our school, because they knew that we are Arabs, so from that time, we started to know that there are problems, and we must be acknowledged* to know what’s going to happen, then when we came home, I was given a chance to teach in Acre. I went there in, in, in the bus where the workers go to, Kardany, to the refinery together with them, and I used to read the papers, and the pamphlets that they were distributed to them from the organization which was called, the liberation, the movement of liberation of Palestine, or the Liberation Movement of Palestine [‘Usbat al-Taharur wal-Tanmiya].

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To Samira Khouri, it is studying in college in Jerusalem to become a teacher in 1944–5 right before the UN planned partition (lines 1–6), the debates which this generated in 1947 (line 8), and having to go back home (Nazareth) before the conditions deteriorated after the partition plan was announced (lines 8–18), the college being located next to a Jewish quarter (Mi’a Shearim, line 15). She then went to teach in Acre (lines 19–20) and had to take the bus along with day workers. Khouri continues: Excerpt #18 And they used to sell pamphlets, and flyers to workers, and people, to tell them, ‘There is a conspiracy. Don’t leave the country. The Jews are forcing you to leave, but don’t leave,’ so in that time, I was acquainted in another side, first in the college with Ittihad al-Mar’a al-Falastiniyya [Palestinian Women’s Organization] and second with this line, which called, ‘Don’t move from your houses. Stay where you are, because there is a conspiracy to empty the land and the houses from its people, so as to bring Jews and people who don’t have lands or houses or country from abroad, to be settled here.’ So I was acquainted with the question, and anyhow from the beginning of my life, when I was very young girl, 5 years old that was in 1936, ’33, ’36, the beginning of the, I think it was not ‘36. It began at the end of the the revolt of the Palestinians. CS: ’36. Khouri read papers and pamphlets given out on the bus in favor of the partition plan (line 22, excerpt #17; lines 1–2, excerpt #18). Khouri goes back to the year 1936 when she was 5 years old and a Palestinian revolt against the British started (lines 12–14, excerpt #18). At that point, Khouri recalls the 1936 revolt. Excerpt #19 SK: ’36. It was the ‘sea’ [peak in Hebrew] of the battles and struggle, but before that the Ithuwwar, the revolutionaries, they

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were, coming to the houses that were on the mountains, and our house was on, settled in a mountain, very far from the city, where we had a very big garden, and like, like a shelter, or something like this, from the trees, of lemon, orange, and olives. We had a grape, what you call it [arisheh] what is it [Arabic] in English? CS: Vines? SK: It’s something like vines, there, in our garden, in the house, and there are revolutionaries, that used to come in there, and hide. My father wasn’t working with them, because he had a shop in the city. He used to be a shoemaker, and, but he knew many of the revolutionaries, so they used to ask him, ‘Please send us food to where we come,’ so they used to come to this place, and my father used to tell me when I was young, ‘Take this basket. It is full with fruits, with food: Lebaneh Za’atar,’ and all these kinds of food, even sometimes, hot food. ‘Take it, and put it. Don’t speak anything. Put it in the, under the tree of grapes.’ I used to put it there, and come back, but this, em, awakened me up, to know what’s the problem, so I started to ask my father, ‘What is it?’ He told me that there are, ‘You mustn’t speak. You mustn’t say to anybody that you are doing like this. There are some men who used to come here to hide, because they want to free Palestine from the English mandate.’ Khouri goes back to the year 1936, her activity as a child as sent by her father to give food to men in hiding (lines 1–7). She started asking her father about what these men wanted (lines 20–1). While Khouri knew about my maternal grandfather’s activism in the revolt, she does not make any reference to him in the formal part of the interview. In the next excerpt, Khouri describes further the early influences on her political awareness. Excerpt #20 And it stayed in my conscience, and heart, so I grew in this knowledge, and this what motivated me to continue in the future, in this especially, when the, the teachers, and some students from the higher classes of us, they used to come and collect

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us, take us out from our classes, to make demonstrations and shout, ‘The mandate out. We don’t want you English people. Go away [Yasqut al-Isti’imar. Itla’u barrah ya engliiz],’ such such goals, and it stayed in my knowledge, in my mind, and when I went to the, the college, also there were debates that started, and I stood by our people, and after this, when the pamphlets of the liberation movement, they used to spread them, when they used to spread them, I used to read that, especially when the discussion of the partition of Palestine was in the United Nations. I used to think, ‘Well this is the resolution. Why not to take it. It will help us to not to have bloodshed,’ and I started to think the same thing, as it, it was, and so I continued when I went to Acre, to teach, I used to read the paper al-Ittihad [Arabic newspaper of the Communist Party], and the pamphlets, and they used to call people to agree for the partition of Palestine, so it will save us of the bloodshed, and in and people to be killed, so I was on this side, and when I came to that, but I didn’t know that there are communists, in the, this liberation movement. I knew that people are nationalists, not nationalists, national people. They want their case, their own issue to be solved, and then I went back to Nazareth, after the, they, they closed the school, and the end, of not at the end, at the middle of 1947. I was in Acre and they called us when they captured Haifa, and they threw away the Palestinians, out and they forced them to leave their houses, and many of them were afraid. It was the debates in college (line 9) and the pamphlets on the bus (lines 8–10) – all this cemented her conviction that a partition would be the best option (lines 11–13), but she didn’t know until later that the people behind the pamphlets were communists (lines 17–18). She went back home to Nazareth after the school in Acre closed (lines 24–5), after Haifa fell, and people in Acre heard about the expulsion of the Arabs from Haifa. They knew their turn was coming soon. In the next excerpt, Khouri describes her experience helping refugees in Acre before eventually going back to Nazareth (lines 1–14, excerpt #21).

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Excerpt #21 SK: So when they captured Haifa, I was in Acre, and the teacher, headmaster of the school told us, now that we have to close the school, and to make it as shelters for people who the refugees, who are coming from Haifa, and we want to go to the bay, there, and to receive people, and so we went to Acre’s bay, and we started to see people, to take them to the Masjid [mosque] al-Jazzar, to the schools where we used to teach, to the other schools, to the places where they have quarters, and where they have places to put, and after we finished, the headmaster said, ‘Those teachers who are not from Acre, should leave and go back to their home, because we are going to close the school, and it’s very dangerous for you to go, to come and to go back by buses, or to live here, so we want you to be safe. Go to your parents, and your families,’ and so I came back, and when I came back, I used to see the same pamphlets, the same flyers calling us to not to leave the homes and houses, to stay in our land, to keep to, to save our land, and so when I saw that those people are calling for a reasonable cause, I loved it, and I said that this is the idea that we should follow, not the the leftist side which calls, ‘Throw the people, the Jews to the,’ in that time, Ahmed Said was calling, ‘Ya Arab irmu al-Yahud ila al-bahar’ [O Arabs, throw the Jews into the sea], it’s not for our benefit, so I started to know that those are some of them in the, this liberation movement are communist, so I liked this idea, and the when they captured Nazareth in 16 of July ‘48, I know we we’re at home. We didn’t leave, and most of the Nazareth people didn’t leave also, so we stayed here, and in the same time, they started to drive up the, to drive away the Palestinians from the villages: from Safuryeh, from ‘Ilut, and we used hear that they are attacking the people and killing them. Khouri gives the exact date of the capture of Nazareth (lines 24–5), again to an interviewer whose family had to go through the capture of Nazareth too, as she retells the story of trauma, a story which committed her to an active political life, to an understanding of a conflict, very

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early on, which includes the other in dialogue. She continues on the massacre of the village of Ilut, a neighboring village to Nazareth: Excerpt #22 Choosing the young people, and putting them on the walls, with their faces to the wall, their hands up, and shoot them. This got me mad. I said, ‘I must struggle. I must go to, with those who are struggling against the army, which is going to kill the Palestinians,’ and in that time, when the people, the refugees came to Nazareth, I used to know also, a friend who used to study in Beersheba, and in Jerusalem with me, and her brother was in the Communist Party, with the liberation movement, and we were acquainted to some of those, the wives of those people, the wives of the communists, for example: Yusef Sabbagh, Sabha Khatib the wife of Youssef Khatib, and Amineh Abu-Ass’ad the wife of Hassan Abu-Assad, Georgette Bsharah, the wife of Shafiq Bsharah, so they told us, because I was with Hana, Hana Khouri, her brother, Khalil Khouri, I hadn’t anybody in the Communist Party, but they were my friends, so I went with them to, to help the refugees, so we used to collect money, clothes, and to take the refugees who came from Safurieh, and from those villages, to set them, settle them in Casanova, and the schools, and the churches There was a very big place for the, the soldiers, the British soldiers, who were during the mandate here. It was called, very big place which is called, the R, E now, it is the, the zone of the factories, and the place, al-Mantiqa al-Sina’iyah, but that, in that place that time, it was the refugee settlement, where we used to settle them, and after we continued our struggle, we knew that we should teach Arab women about, to be acknowledged for this the case, for the people to know something about the situation, so we thought that we should form an organization, for women so us to be in contact with them those women I and my friend Hana, the wife because she knew the wife of Yusef Sabbagh. Khouri lists names of people from Nazareth, men and women who got organized and helped ease the lives of the refugees coming to Nazareth

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(lines 10–14), and the different places where the refugees were temporarily located to inside Nazareth (lines 18–22). She continues: Excerpt #23 So we collected ourselves, and we knew our, together all of them, from the helping of that refugees, in the places. I said, ‘We must do, or form an organization to collect women and teach them, because many and analphabet [illiterate] women there, they don’t know our, the problem they don’t send their girls to school, women are aside, put aside they are neglected, so we must do something for our women.’ We formed an organization, and also the most important thing that was is, to let women be acknowledged about the Palestinian problem, why we were or why the Jews captured our part, or which should be Palestine. We knew that two states should be, two states should be, the Israeli state and the Palestinian state, why the Jews continued entering into to the Arab villages that should be Palestine, and to capture the villages, drive away the people and demolish houses, why should that be? So we started also giving lectures about the problem, to learn by ourselves to read from the papers, and we were helped by some of the members of the Communist Party, by Fu’ad Khouri who is my husband. He was afterwards my husband. Khouri narrates a perspective where the personal and communal (mentioning names of people I knew myself, or knew of, who committed themselves politically, just like she did in the aftermath of 1948) is interwoven with the wider political-historical, as she mentions that she ended up marrying one of the activists (lines 16–18, excerpt #23). In the next excerpt, she continues to talk about her organizational work, right at the emergence of the state of Israel. Excerpt #24 SK: Oh, we started teaching women. We started telling them how to, how to read books. We formed organization, which we called it, in that time, Nahda Society [Jamiyyet al-Nahda

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al-Nisaiyyah] [brief Arabic spoken], and for many years, we said, we rented a house and the house stayed for maybe 25 years or 30 years with us, that was near the Maskubiyyeh, in the house of Tuma. That was our first center, for the movement, eh, at the beginning I told you it was called Nahda Society, and you know what’s the meaning in English this, is resurrection. CS: Renaissance, renaissance. SK: Renaissance, or resurrection, or rising up organization. This is what was the name, but in some years after that, in 1948 that was in October, we continued and we started to hear that there are women, also in the Jewish side, in Tel Aviv, in Haifa, who work for the same cause, what we are working, so we started to be acquainted to them, from the papers, from some of them, also from the Communist Party, and we started to meet whenever we wanted, to make a demonstration. We started to tell them we are making demonstration for demanding, for example to have schools, to have water pipes in the city, to have drain system, to have municipality elected, so and especially for the Palestinian care. We want for the refugees’ case to be solved, and they also, they struggled with us. They said the same thing. We stayed like this coordinating together until ’51. In 1951, we held a congress which we called it the union of the two organizations, that organization was called, Progressive Women, and our organization was called Nahda Society, so we called two organizations, when they were united Ittihad al-Mar’a, Ittihad al-Nisa’a al-Dimuqratiyyat [Union of the Democratic Women], and we continued for so many years, in the same name that was the beginning of our work. In this excerpt Khouri focuses on her activities in the women’s organization which stemmed from the Communist Party in Nazareth, their refugee relief activities right after 1948 ‘in 1948 that was in October’ (lines 12–13), how they met with Jewish women’s organizations from Tel Aviv and Haifa (line 14) very early on and that they held a joint conference in 1951 (line 24), and decided to unite both organizations (lines 25–9).

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Excerpt #25 SK: And you ask our, my motivation, and this is my motivation, is my knowledge, about our issue from the beginning, from 1933, when I was very young. It stayed, and when my father, when I wanted to be affiliated with the Communist Party, my father did not agree. He said, ‘I’m afraid for you, because I know this is dangerous. You’re going to struggle. Maybe you will be imprisoned.’ I told him, ‘Why not? If I want the cause of my people to be implemented, I must struggle, but you taught me.’ I told him, ‘Don’t forget that you taught me to help the revolutionaries who used to come to your house.’ He used to smile and say, ‘You are naughty,’ and he used to stop speaking, and this is the way how I was working. Khouri concludes by going back to the question of personal motivation to remind me again that it was 1933 (line 3) and her father’s influence (lines 3–4), her father’s worries about her becoming politically active (through the Communist Party, lines 4–12). It is to be noted that the Communist Party, which included Arab and Jewish members right from the inception of the state of Israel, was generally popular in what remained of the urban intelligentsia of the Arabs in Israel. It was the only legitimate path towards claiming their national rights. Among members of the party were the writer Emile Habibi, the poet Mahmoud Darwish and others. In addition, Nazareth became a de facto capital of the Arabs inside Israel. It is where their cultural and political activities were focused, in addition to Haifa, a mixed city with a majority of Jews after 1948, but with a substantial Arab minority coming to live there from the surrounding abandoned and demolished villages. In the last two excerpts, Mohammad Zaidan, who runs a center for human rights in Nazareth, traces his activism back to his school days. Excerpt #26 MZ: It started very early, in the late ’80s, when I was in secondary school. I was the head of the Arab committee, in my

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secondary school in Reineh [Arab village near Nazareth], and one of the activities that the school was organizing concerning what’s called coexistence activities between Arab and Jewish students, I remember the first motivation for political activism, came through this meeting, when the Jewish students started to speak about the Palestinian Charter, and the destruction of Israel, when the Arab students including myself, were not understanding what’s going on, basically because we have never been educated, or heard about the Palestinian Charter at that point, and the first political activity that I did, was that I, wrote copies of the Palestinian Charter, made copies, and gave it to all the people in the school. I almost was arrested for all that, but it was the first political activism that brought me to think about the situation between Arab, Jews and Arabs inside Israel, Palestine, Israel conflict, and the fact that there are things we can do concerning at least, the knowledge and the awareness about the situation, since then I became politically active in the university. I was member of the Arab student committee, then I was head of the Arab student committee in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem during the first intifada, when also that was a big part of my political awareness that brought me to be more active in bigger political life, and since then since ’91, I’m in the Arab Association for Human Rights. Also, I started as an administrative worker in the ’94, I realized there is a field that should be developed for the Palestinian minority inside Israel, dealing with our issues from human right perspective, and as a result, I traveled to Amnesty International, had my internship, tried to understand how human right organization function, and what kind of work they do. After that, I vowed to spreading the human rights advocates program in Columbia University in New York, in focusing on international mechanisms and international human right mechanisms, in the UN and other NGOs, in the NGO level, and since then trying to implement what I learned. To Mohammad Zaidan, activism started early on as many other interviewees state, in Zaidan’s case specifically in secondary school

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(lines 1–3). Zaidan’s school’s activities included meetings with Jewish students from other schools, and these meetings helped him adopt a perspective from the other side. Jewish students were telling him about the Palestinian Charter (which he had never heard about before, being an Israeli Palestinian and somewhat remote for the activities of the PLO), and he decided to educate himself on the issue (line 12). At the university, he was active too (line 19–20), in other words relocating to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (lines 21–2) brought another dimension to his awareness of the conflict. In addition, in 1991 he became active in an organization which promotes equal rights for Arab citizens in Israel (lines 24–5), and in 1994 he took an administrative position in the organization (lines 25–6) which allowed him physical movement to international organizations for human rights and a subsequent short period of study at Columbia University in New York (line 32). Zaidan continues: Excerpt #27 CS: Was there a turning point? MZ: You mean the outcome? CS: No in your life, a turning point where ... MZ: ... a turning point, I think in, I think the Hebrew University, activism was the most, the, the most powerful part, in my life concerning the political activism. It was during the first intifada. Jerusalem was the center of everything, wherein the Har Hatzofim campus was in the occupied territories, basically surrounded with Palestinian occupied villages. We had a lot of activism outside the campus, in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and against house demolitions, basically and around Jerusalem area, Isawiyyeh village, and other villages and others, and I think the experience there, was very shocking in the meaning that, Israel is ready to do the most radical human right violations, gross violations, relations, systematic, and then the situation is not going to the right direction. I think the second point where, I think affected my life, is the fact that I was living in United States, for almost one year looking at the situation in

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Palestine, Israel from outside. This was very important for me, in two meanings: one, in the meaning that there are angles that you don’t see, when you are here, but in the same time, there are very important angles, that you don’t see when you are on the outside. And I saw how the American media was covering things. I remember when Goldstein massacre in al-Khalil [Hebron] was in ’94, I was there, in the United States, and I know how it was covered in the American in the American media, and I think this spirit of time, was also important for me to learn how to react with the international community, what the international community do know, and what they don’t know, and how we should explain our case, and how we should introduce our, our issue. This is two things, I think affected my life and affected all my work in the HRA [human rights association]. Zaidan states that the formative years of the Hebrew University, which coincided with the first intifada, is what left the biggest impression on him (lines 4–7). Notice the reference to the campus of social studies at the Hebrew University by its Hebrew name (Har Hatsofim, line 8), a name which indicates his membership and familiarity with the campus. It was part of his life. It is noticeable that even though the interviews were conducted in English, when the English name was not used by the interlocutor, he/she would generally choose the name from their own language (except in this aforementioned example of Har Hatsofim). So for example, what are Gush Etzion settlements in the West Bank to Svirsky (excerpt #2, line 20) are Arab villages with Arabic names to a Palestinian. In addition, going to Columbia and observing the US media coverage of the conflict was also a reason for more activism on Zaidan’s part. In 1994, a Jewish extremist shot and killed people who were praying in Hebron (note the Arabic name, line 18) and the one-sided coverage of the American media left an impact on Zaidan. In sum, while the personal histories are particular for each activist, they seem to anchor personal life events to political events, ties to Israel/Palestine which coincided with the personal. Two particular moments are noted: the time of birth and coming into adulthood

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which is generally marked by the physical movement of going to college.

Israel/Palestine as a physical place Where does Palestine as a spatial-temporal entity start and where does Israel begin? I can find no more appropriate words to describe how a Palestinian feels about Palestine, in spite of the physical fragmentation of Palestine as well as the Palestinians themselves, than those of Rashid Khalidi (1997: 9). He asks: What are the limits of Palestine? Where does it end and where does Israel begin, and are those limits spatial, or temporal, or both? More specifically, what delimits the modern history of the Palestinian people from that of the Israelis, who over the past half century have come to dominate the country both peoples claim? Finally, what is it that demarcates Palestinian history from the larger canvas of Middle East and Arab history, and from the history of the neighboring Arab states, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt? In a similar tone to Khalidi’s citation above, some of my Palestinian interviewees showed an uneasy, or rather complex relationship towards what Palestine is and what makes a Palestinian. The symbolic boundaries transcend the boundaries of the UN resolutions’ designations and present a picture of a wider and broader space than the UN resolutions are capable of. In other words, at the political level, a two-state solution, and abiding by the UN resolutions is desirable; but beyond the political, the historic, social and symbolic link is much more complicated. For Badran (excerpt #1), ‘I felt that I had to be active in the first intifada, I was let down by the fact that we didn’t achieve our aspirations through the intifada’ (lines 16–18); this shows that Palestine as a state – consequently, because of some facts on the ground – is the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This is a perspective of the intifada (breaking out solely in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) which leads to an image of the state of Palestine as bound to the West Bank and the

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Gaza Strip. But in fact the national boundaries (corresponding with the natural boundaries of Palestine) are more complex for Badran. As this excerpt shows, during the invasion of Lebanon ‘no one was helping the Palestinians there’ (line 13), and ‘I felt that we are the only ones who are feeling with our brothers and sisters there’ (lines 13–15). Badran’s symbolic boundaries transcend the designated area of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to include Palestinians wherever they are in the surrounding countries. In contrast, for the peace activists I met (except for Pappé), Israel is the physical space created in 1948, but prior to the 1967 borders of the country. In contrast to Badran, for Gila Svirsky (excerpts #2 and #3), Palestine is the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean prior to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, namely, it is the British mandate: ‘my mother came to Palestine in 1935’ (excerpt #2, lines 6–7). Svirsky was born in 1946. Growing up with a Zionist mother in the US instilled in her a love for the land which she now names Israel, ‘my mother was always teaching me, “Israel, Israel, Israel, Israel”’ (excerpt #2, line 11). When in the 1980s she became the director of the New Israeli Fund, she began to travel ‘around the country’ (excerpt #3, lines 24–5), she lists where she traveled: battered women’s shelters, the Bedouin and the Negev, and Umm Al-Fahim (excerpt #3, lines 25–6). This physical movement within the boundaries of the state of Israel (between 1948 and 1967, i.e. without the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) made her think about inequalities of ‘Israeli society’ (excerpt #3, line 28). Then, after the outbreak of the first intifada, a friend of hers introduced her to Women in Black and she became involved in what was going on in ‘Palestine’ (excerpt #4, line 3) and ‘Palestinian cities’ (excerpt #4, line 4), and the ‘territories’ (excerpt #4, line 1), as the territories constitute the land occupied by Israel in 1967. In other words, to Svirsky, the boundaries between the two entities are clear. Nazareth, for example, would not be a Palestinian city because it falls geographically within the boundaries of the borders of Israel in the aftermath of 1948 (the 1949 Rhodes Armistice Agreement, to be more specific). Svirsky has no dilemmas about that. This is also in accord with her views of a two-state solution, where Israel allows a Palestinian state to be established in the West Bank and the Gaza

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Strip and East Jerusalem, as we shall see in her view of a future solution in Chapter 9. For Shulamit Aloni (excerpts #5 and #6), the picture is similar to that of Gila Svirsky. She states that she was active all of her life, first to bring more equality in ‘Israel’ (line 7), so she worked with ‘Israeli Arabs’ (excerpt #5, line 8), and then after the 1967 war, she worked for peace and for returning ‘the territories’ (excerpt #5, line 11). In her critical view of the political landscape of Israel, she states that the majority of Israelis, despite their different political convictions, Labor Party, right-wing and left-wing people (excerpt #5, lines 31–2), all agree on taking more and more Palestinian land: ‘they wanted to get more and more territory on behalf of the Palestinians [i.e. from the Palestinians]’ (excerpt #5, lines 32–3). Commenting on Golda Meir’s saying ‘there are no Palestinians, because once she was a Palestinian’ (excerpt #5, line 16), Aloni states: ‘OK I was a Palestinian too, but now I am an Israeli, so what are the Palestinians?’ (excerpt #5, lines 16–17). To Naomi Chazan (excerpt #7), Israel is also within the post-1948, pre-1967 physical boundaries of mandate Palestine. ‘Israel won’t have a moment’s quiet unless we have a peace agreement’ (lines 9–10). This will become clearer as I look at Chazan’s vision of peace in the next chapter. Uri Avnery (excerpt #8), a strong and vocal supporter of the Oslo Accords, and a personal friend of Arafat, traces his involvement to the war in 1948, ‘as a soldier in ’48, I bear some responsibility for the future of the state of Israel, its character its actions’ (lines 15–17). To him the national boundaries are clear and therefore the physical boundaries (where Israel’s sovereignty as a state should end) is clear too. He states, ‘I believed in an alliance between the Hebrew and the Arab national movements, since I was very young’ (lines 1–2). When I asked him after the formal interview about why he would not, for example, support a one-state solution, a state for all of its citizens, he argued that both the Palestinians and the Jews alike feel strongly about their national identity and therefore a one-state solution would be doomed to failure. In contrast, Ilan Pappé (excerpt #10) vocally supports a one-state solution for the two peoples. ‘Palestine’ (line 3) is one physical space

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shared by two peoples, ‘the reality around me was binational’ (line 10). In other words, for Pappé there is no dilemma. He advocates for one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, a democratic state which respects the human rights of all the people who live within the boundaries of its sovereignty. This position is not only historically informed, but also driven by a concern for human rights. Pappé pronounces this position without any hesitation. Again, this might not be as straightforward a position to a Palestinian Arab as it is to a leftist Jewish activist. A Palestinian voicing this same position runs the risk of engaging dialogically with the already meta-discursive argument of ‘I hear you as saying you deny the Jews their rights.’ This extra pressure on a Palestinian interlocutor makes it more burdensome for him or her to state Pappé’s position with such clarity. Again, Pappé’s and others’ positions in this regard will be revisited in the next chapter as well. Lastly, Pappé’s position is part of a small vocal minority position in Israel which advocates a democratic one-state solution for all. To Zahira Kamal (excerpt #12, lines 10–14), ‘we are Jordanian citizens according to you know, what happened, the political situation that took place, the West Bank of Palestine, it became what’s called, ya’ni, it is the West Bank of Jordanian River, actually that’s the part that’s left from Palestine, that is becoming part of the Hashemite Kingdom.’ In addition, at the beginning of the interview, she states ‘my family has immigrated from Lid, Yaffa, my father lost his job in Ein Karem’ (excerpt #11, lines 3–4). In other words, the historic family ties to Palestine as a whole are there, but perhaps for Kamal, the best and most practical solution is to think of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean as an area with two separate national spaces. To Mahdi Abd Al-Hadi (excerpts #14 and #15), Palestine is the place where Palestinians live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. He says: ‘you come now to see that Palestinians today the three and a half million Palestinians are in the prison’ (excerpt #14, lines 8–10), and talks of ‘establishing another Arab regime in Palestine’ (excerpt #14, lines 24–5). Samira Khouri (excerpts #17–25), because of her exposure to the political thought of the Communist Party, was ready to accept the

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partition as pronounced by UN Resolution 181. The problem to her is why the ‘Jews captured our part, or which should be Palestine. We knew that two cities should be, two states should be, the Israeli state and the Palestinian state, why the Jews continued entering into the Arab village that should be Palestine, and to capture the villages drive away the people and demolish houses why should that be?’ (excerpt #23, lines 9–15). For Mohammad Zaidan, having been active in promoting equal rights for the Arab citizens in Israel, it became clear to him that the Oslo Accords in 1993 left out the Palestinians inside Israel, and that the Palestinians inside Israel will have to take care of themselves and raise their pressing issues with the state of Israel on their own. To him, Arabs are a minority in Israel and should be protected by law if Israel wants to live up to its democratic claims. He corrected me when I called the Arab minority inside Israel ‘Israeli Arabs,’ and said that probably because I live outside the country, I miss the fact that the term is no longer popular among ‘Israeli Palestinians’ as he now refers to them. The truth is, I was well aware of the change of terminology and I had used it deliberately to provoke a response. Zaidan is a believer in a two-state solution where Israeli Palestinians have a place in a democratic Israel.

Conclusion Each individual tied her or his perspective (the ‘I’ being its center) to the spatial location of self, and temporally to historic events. A majority of my interviewees anchored their perspective on their motivation for work, and thus their own self-awareness of the conflict in the physical sense of time and place: in other words, the physical place of the ‘I’ at the moment of birth and entering young adulthood. Most interviewees also tied their life events to historical events: the Palestinian revolt of 1936–9, the partition plan in 1947, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the occupation of the remainder of Palestine in 1967, the 1982 Lebanon war, the first intifada in 1987 and the Oslo Accords in 1993. As in the example of Amneh Badran’s excerpt, though not actually born yet at a turning point such as 1967, the self

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is still located in relation to that crucial year. However, the differences lie in where ‘I’ is located temporally and spatially. Each individual has his/her own personal spatial-temporal location, and hence history of the self. In addition, the ‘I’ is often involved in physical travel or movement around the country, outside of it or, in the case of Gila Svirsky, moving to the country in addition to later travel around the country. This last point contrasts with the present situation of almost impossible physical movement for most Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza (in and out of their towns as well as to other countries), and the difficulties of travel for Palestinians in Israel, as well as for Israeli Jews going to Palestinian areas of the West Bank and Gaza. However, the latter two travel to the West Bank in groups and through their organizations, many times experiencing great hardship as a result of the trip, and maybe risking their lives at points of great tension such as the checkpoints around Palestinian cities and villages. Additionally, some of those interviewed locate the self in relation to family members, their occupations or activities at the time the interviewee was growing up, as well as to different friends with similar political convictions (both of which might be gendered), or to other cohort politicians. In addition, many note the physical movement inside the country or outside (for education or work) as formative in gaining a perspective of activism. I am reminded of the Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan, who noted in her autobiography that her father often asked her to write poetry on Palestine instead of focusing on her inner world. Her poignant reaction is as follows: A voice from within would rise up in silent protest: How and with what right or logic does father ask me to compose political poetry, when I am shut up inside these walls? I don’t sit with the men, I don’t listen to their heated discussions, nor do I participate in the turmoil of life on the outside. I’m still not even acquainted with the face of my own country as I was not allowed to travel. ... Father was demanding that I write on a subject totally removed from my interests and having no connection with the psychological struggle going on inside me. Feelings of

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incompetence so inundated me that, when I went to bed, I would give myself over to weeping. (Tuqan, in Jayyusi, 1992: 712) Tuqan, in other words, found it impossible to develop a political perspective and engage politically with the Palestinian cause precisely because, coming from a feudal family from Nablus (born in 1917), she, as a woman was confined to the walls of her house, unlike her brothers who were known through their extensive travel in Palestine and outside of it as public intellectuals. It is to be noted, that it seems to be a universally shared belief that physical movement or travel brings about a new level of self-consciousness and self-knowledge, which results in a new perspective on the world, the universe, humanity, in mundane daily ordinary life, and even in myth. In other words, and as many writers have already commented, mythical heroes often embark on a physical journey towards self-awareness. Some of my interviewees, just like mythical heroes, embarked on a physical journey in time and place towards self-awareness – moving from their place of birth somewhere else in early adulthood for purposes such as studying (as in the cases of Khouri, Kamal, Pappé, Espanioly and Zaidan), or immigrating (as in the case of Svirsky); others describe how these spaces are populated with other people’s words and deeds (as in the case of Aloni), while for others, spaces move around them while they remain in their city (as in the case of Badran and her 1982 experience of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, and her compassion towards other Palestinians in Lebanon). Lastly, with regard to a number of Israeli Jewish interviewees, Palestine generally occupies a very specific spatial-temporal location, being all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean prior to the year 1948. Palestine after that year means to them the spatial dimensions of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, in other words, the remainder of Palestine from 1948 until 1967. This could have stemmed from the pressure of the demand for a pragmatic solution to the conflict, which five of my six Jewish interviewees see as drawing a border between two states abiding as much as possible by UN resolutions. This is not an issue that is so simple or straightforward to some of the Palestinian interviewees. Their relationship

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to Palestine, biographically, historically and experientially speaking is much more complex than anything a physical political border line could say. While some of them clearly advocated a two-state solution, their connection to the land spreads across the web of villages and towns between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. I attribute their symbolic perspective of what makes Palestine to the painful history of fragmentation, the inability to move back to one’s home and to move freely in what used to be historic Palestine. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza specifically could not even travel in what became Israel from 1948 till 1967. After that they had limited ability to travel in Israel (mainly for work, or to visit family), and after the first intifada their travel became more and more difficult. Palestinians in Nazareth on the other hand, traveled freely in all of historic Palestine after 1967, but after the second intifada, their travel became difficult and was restricted within the West Bank and Gaza, as was such travel for their Jewish counterparts. I am always shocked to rediscover how intimately my father knows the land in and around Nazareth, down to the Mediterranean shore on the one hand, and down towards the Sea of Galilee on the other hand. He knows why certain trees are there (because of an old well for example) and how old they are, and he knows the stones, ‘him who knows the time of the rain from the smell of the stone’ (Darwish, cited in Peteet, 2005: 5). As for my own perspective, this is an inevitable part of my being who I am; it comes from being born in Nazareth a few years before the 1967 war, and growing up in the only remaining Arab town after the Arab exodus in 1948. I lived a blissful childhood unaffected by and unaware of the turmoil around my very birth and existence. I have no recollections of the year 1967. I vaguely and very fleetingly remember our happiness as a family every time we visited Old Jerusalem, as well as the breathtakingly beautiful mountainous road to Jerusalem. I also remember shopkeepers in Jerusalem as being always courteous and welcoming and graceful. As a child, I often heard heated political discussion in our guest room, but I never paid that any attention, since as a child I wasn’t allowed into that space of the house. The writer Emile Habibi used to hide sometimes in our house or

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the orchard surrounding it, but that did not leave an impact on me. My political awareness started to slowly grow in high school, as our school, in defiance of the Ministry of Education (it wasn’t part of it) established a Palestinian folklore week. After that, it was the shock of the Lebanon war in 1982. On the gorgeous afternoon of June 5, 1982, where the freshening sea breeze was still felt in the air, and where the skies looked deeply blue, as we were sitting at the graduating ceremony for my high school, Israeli war planes were buzzing above us in their way to Lebanon. There was apprehension and chilliness in the air, and that happy moment in my life was always mixed with the anxiety I felt as a result. My first year of college at Haifa University started one month after the shocking massacres of Sabra and Shatila. Being very young, I somehow managed to suppress my sad feelings and focus on my studies, something I still had to do in the year 1987 when the first intifada started and I was doing a graduate degree. So it is definitely the year 1982 and the year 1987 which formalized my consciousness. I don’t think the Oslo Accords left an impression on me either way. There was too much media buzz, and I simply forced myself not to think about it. In 1994 I went to do my doctorate at Georgetown University. I felt good about myself, and I said to myself, finally I could say I am a Palestinian – only to encounter walls of prejudiced views with regard to the Palestinians, misunderstandings, if not outright ignorance. It was coming back to live in Jerusalem and teaching at the Hebrew University and at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, right at the time of the outbreak of the second intifada which, ironically, helped me restore my balance, by forcing me not to shut myself off (because it is more comfortable). Having to face my students every day, right at the beginning of the second intifada, taught me that they need me and need to see me (as much as I need them). I was a comforting sight in the classroom that not everything had gone wrong and chaotic, contrary to what their army generals and media moguls were telling them. It is this simple day-to-day experience, as well as the friendship and generosity of colleagues I met at both institutions, which I hold responsible for cementing a perspective of mine which is focused on the other as much as it is focused on one’s self.

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Finally, on the fragmentary physical and citizenship status of the Palestinian experience, I here would like to cite the well-received memoir of a Ramallah visit by Mourid Barghouti (2003). Barghouti, a refugee native of Ramallah, describes crossing the borders between France and Switzerland one summer with a group of friends and family, all Palestinian: The policeman stepped forward and asked for the passports. We collected them and gave them to him, and he saw an amazing sight: in his hands were passports from all over the world – Jordan, Syria, the United States, Algeria, Britain, and even Belize – and the names of them showed that their holders were from one family: all Barghoutis. Add to that Radwa’s [his wife] Egyptian passport and Emil Habibi’s Israeli passport – for he had come from Nazareth ... (Barghouti, 2003: 139) When they tried to explain to an amazed policeman what this was all about, he laughed and said: ‘That’s enough! I don’t want to understand’ (Barghouti, 2003: 139).

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6 ON PEACE AND TER ROR ISM

Peace is the tranquillity of order. (St Augustine) Justice will bring about peace. (Isaiah 32:17) If I had to describe in a few words what peace is to each of my interviewees, I would say this: to Samira Khouri it is to have a good life, to Zahira Kamal it is to have rights, to Ilan Pappé it means reconciliation, to Amneh Badran it is a situation of having a dignified life, to Uri Avnery it is to look at the ‘other’ at ‘the height/level of the eyes’, to be equal at all levels, to Naomi Chazan it is a situation of being a natural part of the environment, to Gila Svirsky it is for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories in order to allow for the state of Palestine to be established, to Yael Dayan it is normalization, becoming a part of the environment, to Shulamit Aloni it is about building a strategy of reconciliation, to Mahdi Abd Al-Hadi the word has been overused and consequently lost its meaning, and finally, to Nabila Espanioly and to Mohammad Zaidan it means justice. My interviewees did not address terrorism directly except for two, Samira Khouri, the veteran activist from Nazareth and Yael Dayan, the former Knesset member who was the deputy mayor of Tel Aviv at the time I interviewed her. I will juxtapose both of their perspectives towards the end of the chapter. While Dayan considers terrorism to come from outside the realm of logic and reason, it is to Khouri a result of extreme frustration and an expression of political and individual

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despair. As for peace, initially, I was expecting a gendered perspective on peace, when I asked each interviewee the simple question ‘What is peace?’ However, I was not able to pinpoint any coherence between the sexes to the point where I could confidently say, that women understand peace differently from men (similar to Gilligan’s argument [1982] that men understand justice differently than women).

The interviewees’ responses My interviewees’ responses varied, as their perspectives naturally vary. But one common denominator which binds all of them is the concern for human welfare, as well as a general consensus among themselves that things need to change in a drastic way for life to get better for both communities: the Palestinian and the Israeli. Samira Khouri, like many others in the following excerpts, defines peace by what it is not: ‘no war, no killing, no women weeping, no children, no weeping children, no orphans’ (excerpt #1, lines 2–5). In other words, it is a desired state of being: ‘to have good life’ (line 1), and for ‘people to be happy’ (line 10). All this implies that today people are not happy. People can be happy when there is a state taking care of their well-being: ‘education,’ ‘health,’ ‘social welfare’ (lines 9–11). There is no mention of a Palestinian state, or for that matter an Israeli one, but rather of a state in a generalized form which can provide for basic needs of its citizens. Killing is against people’s right to live (line 15), and this is one of the principles of the Human Rights Convention (lines 16–18). At a personal level, Khouri wants to see children smiling (lines 10–12), not crying as she often sees when she opens the newspaper (lines 12–13). Khouri does not particularize the nationality of the children. It is a basic principle for her, regardless of who the children are. Excerpt #1 CS: What is peace? SK: What is peace. Peace is to have, good life, no war, no killing, no women weeping, no children, no weeping children, no orphans. Of course there will be orphans, people will die and so, but anyhow to make war, and to let people weep from war. It

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is different from to die from disease or anything. I believe that when peace comes, also people can find work. Everything will be, will go in good way. The budgets will be spent on work, and the budgets will be spent on education, on health, on social welfare, and to people, to be happy, to, the most important thing for me, is to see smiles and, and the, and the faces are looking to be happy, especially children, and when I see always open the paper I see that there are girls or young boys weeping I weep and I don’t want to weep, I don’t want to weep from war. I, I believe that all people have the right to live without any killing, and without any war, so if we they have the right, this is the right thing, to live without war this is one of the mithaq huquq al-insan [Arabic for Human Rights’ Convention]. Conspicuously absent from Khouri’s perspective on peace is any mention of a nationality or state by name. For her, the well-being of people, regardless of who they are, should not be compromised. Like Khouri, Zahira Kamal, the former Palestinian minister for women’s affairs, expresses that the well-being of people, regardless of what state they live in, should not be compromised. She explains that it is not just to have two states (lines 7–8), herself being a believer in a two-state solution. Rather, to encourage a ‘culture of peace’ (line 9), which should include ‘freedom, equality, democracy’ (lines 10–11), and not exclude any citizen from it (line 11). Excerpt #2 ZK: Peace. It is living, living with the, living as a person, with myself in peace meaning, that you know, I have rights. I can have access to different kind of needs, living with the other, on same way, acknowledging the other, acknowledging, they acknowledge my needs, and acknowledge, means understanding each other, so that’s why even when I’m talking about Palestinians Israeli conflict, and the need for peace, one of the very important, it’s not only to talk about two-states solution, two states living alongside each other, and having the culture of peace, because it is, when

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we are talking about the culture of peace, it is freedom, equality, democracy, rights, all that it is included. Note that I might be using the word ‘citizen’ loosely here, as my informants do not. I do not know why both of the above-mentioned informants avoid the term. My speculation is that because, deeply and profoundly, Israel has claimed to provide equality, freedom and democracy for its citizens in principle. But that leaves out Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who live under Israeli control; they are not citizens of any state, as there is no state of Palestine. Nabila Espanioly, who runs a children’s center in Nazareth, touches on Isaiah’s note on peace being about justice (line 4). However, like Khouri she defines peace by what it is not: ‘no sexism, no fascism, no chauvinism, no discrimination ...’ (lines 7–9). Excerpt #3 CS: Uh, what is peace? NE: Peace is a complicated situation. It is a vision. It is a dream, where for me, peace is not about peace agreement. It’s, peace is about justice. Peace is about no sexism, no fascism, no chauvinism, no discrimination, equality, just. Of course, there is a very nice definition, which I learn, which I like, on when they ask us this, on feminism, and I define it as the anti-sexism, and when you don’t have sexism, you don’t have also class division, you don’t have racism, you don’t have fascism, and so peace is about feminism. In other words, peace is an ideal state which can be reached, but it is not there at the moment. As an activist for social justice for Palestinians inside Israel, and as a supporter of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and as a feminist, her perspective is that of equality in rights regardless of the nationality of the individual. An ideal society is that which lacks ‘class division,’ ‘racism’ and ‘fascism’ (line 9). There is no mention of any particular nationality, as her vision should include all human beings living in one place. Peace is ‘not about peace agreement’ (line 3). It should have a deeper meaning of justice and equality.

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Pappé understands peace to be about reconciliation (excerpt #4, line 1), which allows ‘people to put behind eventually, the traumas of the past, and the predicaments of the present ...’ (line 4). It is a perspective which is consistent with Pappé’s vision of a one-state solution which he has been advocating, ‘peace for me, in Israel and Palestine, for me would be one state where everyone could live as equal to the other ... a state which includes, the people who live between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean’ (lines 15–19). Excerpt #4 IP: Peace for me, is reconciliation, I think, and, and, and, by reconciliation, I mean, a process which allows, people to put behind eventually the traumas of the past, and the predicaments of the present, and to agree to build a joint future, and I know these are high words, but I, I really think that it’s a bit like a psychological process, where if you don’t deal properly with the traumas of the past, there’s no closure. You cannot close, close it, so I think peace starts by a very bold and brave examination, of the past, and the relation between the two candidates for reconciliation, and only then, there is, there is a need to go, and understand what’s wrong in the present, and only finally when you’ve settled the problems of the past, and you can understand what, what is the problem in the present you can move on. This is in general terms, not in concrete terms, not concrete terms. I have a concrete answer. Peace for me, in Israel and Palestine, for me would be one state where everyone could live as equals to the other, regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, or religion. Peace I think is, is, is a state which includes the people who live between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean, and which I think if they, if they are, if they can be part of such a political unit, they can really make a difference not just for themselves but to the area as a whole. Pappé’s vision of reconciliation and his call to put the past behind us, in order to look ahead to a future which preserves the dignity of both peoples, echoes the reconciliation process in post-apartheid South

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Africa. In other words, he is already examining the South African post-apartheid state, as a model to follow for solving the conflict and for reconciliation between both peoples. He is the first so far of the four interviewees discussing what they think of peace to mention the type of state which should result from achieving peace. He mentions both ‘Israel and Palestine’ (line 15) as interchangeable names for the same place between ‘the river Jordan and the Mediterranean’ (line 19), a place for all the people who live there (lines 15–19), a people who should have equal rights ‘regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, or religion’ (line 17). I asked Pappé, further, whether he thinks both peoples can indeed live together in the next excerpt. Excerpt #5 CS: So you, think that the two peoples, can live in one state? IP: I, yes. I, if I may borrow from Edward Said. He has one sentence, which I really like, that says, I am not quoting him verbatim. I remember it, that it says something about the Jews and Palestinians destined to live together, in one state, not because they would like it, because this is the best solution for them, but because this is the only way they can do it. It means that they have two ways of going about with this fate, so to speak: one is to, to try and have the upper hand, or to accept, and reconcile to the fact that they have to be together. If you look at the geography of this place, the demography in it, the way that the two communities are already intertwined, and their joint history, even the victimizers and the victim, * so yeah, so peace is a vision of a situation, that I wish to be ... When I asked him further whether he thinks both peoples can live together, he cited Edward Said (line 2), for believing that the two peoples are too close to each other at too many levels, physical and symbolic to be separated (lines 3–10). He concludes that peace is a ‘vision of a situation’ (lines 13–14), by which he means, a vision of a ‘state’ (excerpt #4, lines 16–17) which treats all people living in it equally. Amneh Badran, who was the director of the Palestinian Jerusalem Center when I met her, in contrast, does not specify one state or two

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states. To her, peace is a ‘situation’ (line 1) of a ‘dignified life’ (line 1) and of equality (line 2). In fact, she articulates the irrelevance of a discussion of a one-state or a two-state solution (lines 4–5), because it is about feeling secure, dignified and equal (line 10). Excerpt #6 AB: Peace for me is a situation, whereby I can have a dignified life, life, whereby I feel that I’m equal. I can restore the justice that I deserve, as a personal, as a person, and as a collective. What of this, will lead to a two-state solution, or a one-state solution, or, or no state, is, is not the issue, because I think for a long time, we have been very much, limiting ourselves, two states, and two states, so, and how, and thinking about, the formulas instead about, thinking about the content, and the content is, is that to find, to, to find the formula, whereby I can live in security, with dignity, feeling equal, and being able to prosper and develop, and, and have hope for the future, for me and other generations to come. Like Samira Khouri from Nazareth, Zahira Kamal from Jerusalem and Nabila Espanioly from Nazareth, Badran does not mention Palestine or Israel by name. To her, peace is more fundamental than being in one state and not the other. Uri Avnery’s perspective (the veteran two-state solution activist from Tel Aviv) in the next excerpt is consistent with his advocacy for a two-state solution, a Palestinian and an Israeli state within the boundaries prior to the 1967 war. This specification is contrary to Khouri, Kamal, Espanioly and Badran’s general yearning for the well-being of all people. Excerpt #7 UA: At this point, and somehow this has to be overcome, but this is the long-term effort, and I hope that people will be fed up, with the war, and look for a compromise, even before we really achieve this, this thing. Of course it depends on what you

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mean by peace. I think peace exists in two different levels: the formal peace, which I would say it means, the absence of war, or the stop of hostilities and fighting, which can be achieved by a formal treaty, and for which a negative attitude is good enough, * and underneath that, there is another level of real peace, real peace between peoples, which needs a much deeper understanding, understanding for the other side, a readiness to live side by side with the other side, basic recognition that the other side is as human as you are, that you must be ready to speak at the height of the eye, begovah einayem [at the height of the eye, Hebrew idiom for to be equal] as a mutual respect, and equality. This is much more difficult of course. For this you need a positive attitude, and to work actually on both levels. Avnery’s perspective on peace is a two-state solution, as he sees the present situation to consist of two nations in a state of war against each other (lines 1–8). These two peoples have to understand that they can live side by side (lines 11–12). But, to be able to do that, both peoples need to recognize the humanity of the other people (line 11), and be able to understand that they are equal in humanity (lines 10–14). To be able to be equal is to recognize the other’s humanity and to have respect and dignity for the other (line 13), a desired situation which is not attained at present because both peoples are at war. In other words, Avnery, like Pappé, is looking for a political condition, but the women discussed so far look for a humanitarian condition. While the women I have discussed so far (who happen to be Palestinian from both Nazareth and Jerusalem) imply a state, and while the men imply human rights, it is what gets foregrounded which I find interesting here. Note that the Hebrew expression ‘begovah ha’einayem’ (line 14) can also mean to speak down to someone at his or her level, but I think that Avnery (as well as Espanioly in Chapter 9) meant ‘to speak on equal terms’. I asked Avnery further whether a viable Palestinian state can happen in the next excerpt. Excerpt #8 CS: Do you see a viable Palestinian state in Gaza, and the West Bank?

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UA: Yes I do. It won’t be easy, the territory is small, the disconnection between the two parts creates a difficulty which has to be overcome, but basically I think the Palestinian state consists of people, the state consists of a nation. The question is not so much of a viable Palestinian state but a viable Palestinian people, and I think there is a viable Palestinian people, I think it is a strong people, I follow with great admiration the endurance, I might say the heroism of the Palestinians in their fight for liberation, and I think that these qualities are putting the Palestinians at least at a medium of the nation of the world, if not about, I’m quite optimistic about the future of the Palestinian state, once it comes about – of course a new state, a state by people which never had a state, which was never free, never independent will face a lot of difficulties. I know, I don’t envy them. The state of England started on a much better conditions and that we had a lot of problems in the beginning, in the first few years, people look at Israel today, first years, this was a very very poor state in the time where the minister of finance didn’t know where he’s going to get the money to buy wheat in the next month, or the next month. We had a lot of fighting for freedom in Israel. There was no freedom in the beginning, no real freedom of the press, no real freedom of association. We all fought for this. We achieved it. We, I mean the Jewish part of Israel and Palestinians will face much greater difficulties. I think they will be able to do it. I think there is a lot of vitality in the Palestinian nation. I think there will be a general desire for democracy among many Palestinian activists. Avnery’s response is consistent with his perspective of a conflict between two peoples who have the right for separate self-determination. He discussed how Israel started as a financially poor state, but things got better (line 22), how Israel nonetheless made progress at many different levels in spite of the difficulties it faced (line 24). To him, the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are clear. But this does not cancel the other. To the contrary, it allows the other to fight for its own selfdetermination, in order to achieve statehood just like ‘us.’

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Naomi Chazan, the political scientist and the former Knesset member from Jerusalem expresses a similar view in the next excerpt. Excerpt #9 NC: Peace is a situation. It’s not love, but it’s also not war. It’s a situation where you live as a natural part of the environment, with decent relations with your neighbors, OK, and, I again, not war. It doesn’t have to be love, but it just has to be an integral part of the neighborhood, let’s put it that way. To Chazan peace is ‘not war’ (line 1), and normal relations with your neighbors (line 3). To her, it is a perspective of separation of two national groups which should have their own separate states, thus the division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is kept. Note here, that Chazan was a supporter of the Oslo Accords. To her, when she is talking about the neighbors, she doesn’t specify them as being Palestinian, thus implying normal relation with all neighbors (Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians, etc.). It is a view that regards the neighbors as separate nations, and the Palestinians as perhaps equal politically. What I mean by that is, once the conflict is viewed as war, it gives equal weight to both parties, even though one has a state and a military and one doesn’t. Gila Svirsky, the American-born co-founder of organizations such as Women in Black and Machsom Watch, like all the Jewish interviewees discussed so far in this chapter, regardless of their gender, is talking about a state. In her case, it is a two-state solution, just as it is for Avnery and Chazan. Excerpt #10 CS: What is peace? GS: What is peace. I want Israel to leave the occupied territories. I’m a pragmatic person, and so I know that we cannot leave every single inch. I know that there will be areas that Israel will still keep annexed to Israel, but I believe that we have to give to the Palestinian state an even equal swap of land. For every acre that we take of Palestinians, we must give them an acre of

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Israel. Jerusalem has to be the shared capital of both sides. The refugees have to have their issue resolved. It’s complex, but it can be done, and, justice means reducing the gap between the rich and the poor, in Israel, so that every person in Israel will have a security net protecting him or her from poverty, from, inability to access, medical treatment in the case of ill health. Everyone will have an equal opportunity for education, and for women, complete equality of opportunity, not equality, God forbid, just equality of opportunity. To Svirsky, Israel should withdraw from the 1967-occupied territories (lines 2–3), in order to allow for a Palestinian state to emerge in that territory. The national boundaries are clear, and the physical boundaries are as clear, that is, both correspond equally. She specifies that peace can be achieved through borders, a shared Jerusalem, and a solution to the refugee problem (though she doesn’t specify what this solution could be, lines 1–9). She even considers a land swap if Israel insists on keeping a few settlements in the West Bank (lines 5–6). After that, Israel as a state needs to resolve its own social problems, by ‘reducing the gap between the rich and poor’ (lines 10–11), and to her that is justice (line 10). To her the ‘us’ and ‘them’ are clearly marked, physically and politically. I asked her further, in the next excerpt, whether she thinks her methods are effective. Excerpt #11 CS: Do you think you are being effective? GS: Yes I do. I think we are being very effective, or let me be more accurate. I don’t know who is being effective, but something good is happening. I base that on public opinion polls that have changed dramatically in the last fifteen years. It’s probably not the peace movement that’s been the most important factor in making change, but for whatever reason, in the last fifteen years, Israelis have radically, really radically, changed their views. Fifteen years ago the PLO was considered illegitimate. Arafat was considered the terrorist of the illegitimate organization. We were not allowed to talk to Palestinians. Palestinians were not

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allowed to talk to us. I mean it was illegal for Israelis to be talking to Palestinians. Today, 80 something per cent of Israelis want a two-state solution, Israel on our side Palestine on their side. Svirsky asserted that her methods are effective (lines 2–11), for one reason, Israelis have accepted the PLO and Arafat after considering both ‘illegitimate’ (lines 10–11). She believes that today most Israelis want a two-state solution (lines 13–15), which is an improvement from when Israelis were not allowed to speak to Palestinians in earlier decades (lines 12–13). On the other hand, Yael Dayan, the deputy mayor of Tel Aviv when I met her, gave a very similar response to Chazan’s in the next excerpt. To her, peace is about normal relations with the neighbors, whom she specifies as being Palestinian (line 3). Excerpt #12 YD: Peace is a normalization. Peace is not all, is not all a glory. It’s not, dancing and singing and kissing. Peace is a, first of all, a, the fulfillment of the potential of each of the participants. That is, I would like to see the Palestinians celebrate peace by implementing their potential, and without it, I think peace will be primarily in the first phases, separation for, each population to, to will set* itself a list of goals, which do not have to do with the other, because the Palestinians have to build infrastructure for a society, hopefully democratic legal system, health system, education system, political system. That’s why there is no symmetry. We are there already, and we have to concentrate on changing our priority, and when our priorities change, and we don’t have defense as the main thing, I think, peace will be at the beginning, separation, and only afterwards cooperation, but it’s really a normal life, just to, to review priorities, set on welfare, on education, on health, on having a better life for your people, and not in any big terms. I mean we don’t need parades. To Dayan, both peoples have to separate from each other and each should set goals that they want to achieve in their respective states

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(lines 4–7). The Palestinians have to build what Israelis already have for themselves: ‘infrastructure,’ a ‘democratic legal system,’ a ‘health system,’ an ‘education system’ and a ‘political system’ (lines 8–9). Israelis have all that but they need to change their priorities from ‘defense’ (lines 12–13) to more investment on welfare, education and health (lines 15–16). I asked her further whether she thinks a viable Palestinian state is attainable in the next excerpt. Excerpt #13 CS: Do you see a viable Palestinian state that can happen? YD: Absolutely. I think they were viable before ’67. Only they were occupied by Egypt, and Jordan, so a, other than the last 40 years, almost, Palestinians were prevented from fulfilling themselves as people, but a viability, yes. They have good education, basically the big differences, I don’t have to tell you, between the West Bank and Gaza, and the real investment should be done in Gaza, and because of the status of the refugees was perpetuated, they were left behind, and whoever is left behind, is a hot house for, extremism, for religious movements. This is you know, ABC. I don’t, and I think there will be a period of a really difficulty, like in Israel. The old-timers had to absorb the new immigrants from North Africa, and we had the entire Jewish community of the world help us. At that point, Dayan differentiates between the West Bank and Gaza (lines 6–7). To her, Palestinians need to invest in Gaza and lift it out of its poverty, because it has refugees (line 8), and is becoming a ‘hot house for extremism for religious movement’ (lines 9–10). The Palestinians in the West Bank, being better off, need to help the Gazans, just as Israel had to help the Jewish communities from North Africa. Dayan’s perspective is that of two separate, equally responsible parties. She does not even hint at any responsibility on the side of Israel with regard to why Gaza is so poor. To her, it is because of the refugees in Gaza and not the Israeli occupation. Sara Roy (1995), already in the early 1990s, noted that Israel’s occupation not only halted any economic development in Gaza but also actively impeded

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any potential development. Further, Dayan likens the situation of the Gazans to North African Jews being absorbed in Israel. I have already noted research which critiques the Jewish national project of assimilating Middle Eastern Jews into an Ashkenazi mold. In fact, earlier in the interview, Dayan told me how her mother helped North African women to earn a living by selling their handicrafts (to affluent Ashkenazi Jews, and abroad). Lastly, for her, Palestinians were occupied by Egypt and Jordan prior to 1967, and now by Israel, but they deserve their own state. Dayan does not mention the year 1948 as the year of the dispersal of Palestinians and Israel’s contribution to the Nakba. The implication is: 1948 was legitimate, 1967 is not. Needless to say, the situation is much more complex for a Palestinian. Note also that Dayan’s mother is famous for selling Bedouin Palestinian women’s embroidery in Europe as authentically Israeli handcraft. On the one hand, she was sincerely helping these women economically, as a woman in power helping other women (these women became Israeli citizens after 1948), but on the other hand she was selling Palestinian folklore as Israeli. In the next excerpt, Shulamit Aloni, former Israeli minister of education, defines peace as ‘a strategy of reconciliation’ (lines 4–5), so it is not a goal on its own but rather a means towards reconciliation. She also defines peace by what it is not, ‘a strategy of power’ (line 5), and ‘more power’ (line 6) and ‘force’ (line 6). She has been very critical of her country for using power (aided by a foreign country, the USA – but she prefers European countries to the USA, because they understand more about reconciliation, lines 10–11). Excerpt #13 CS: What is peace? SA: What is peace? CS: For, for you. SA: [Sigh] Peace for me is first of all, to build a strategy of reconciliation, and peace, and not strategy of power, because the strategy in Israel is power and more power, force and more force, and they always justify it, by saying that the Arabs understand

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only force, and power, and the Arabs say that we understand only force and power. Now they, they, that is why I’m very much pro-Europe, and not pro-America because they started with reconciliation, while America, I mean, the United States has still a strategy of power, and Israel has a strategy of power, and they use it again and again, and here and there. They even provoke the Palestinians to use power, because they, they don’t [light laughter], so first of all, peace means, in this sort of respect, here, means that we should recognize that the Palestinians have the right for self-determination, to have their own state. We, that we have to respect the resolutions of the United Nations 242 and 338, which means to withdraw to the borders of ’67, and I think we should build open borders, and have many enterprises together, because we have a problem of water. Today we take their water. They don’t, I just was in some villages. They don’t have water. They have to buy through lorries who are bringing them water once a day while the, the settlers are using their water free of charge, and, and free of measure, you know, so, open borders and, having common enterprises, and which means, to, to change the strategy. I mean the mentality. We have to understand that they are human beings, and slavery is no more accepted, because what they did in the Gaza Strip, the Kulakim [Kulaks], you know what are Kulakim, the Jewish settlers there, they didn’t work very hard. They took the Palestinians and some of the Thailands for 10 hours a ... In other words, peace is about reconciliation which stands in opposition to the use of power. Her perspective on how peace and reconciliation can be achieved is through the practical measure of adhering to the UN Resolutions 242 and 338, which will basically allow for a Palestinian state to emerge within the 1967 borders of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This should be followed by open borders and cooperation between the two states: Palestine and Israel (line 17). To her, the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is intolerable and she blames her country for the bad state of the Palestinian population in those areas, ‘we have to understand that they are human beings, and

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slavery is no more accepted’ (lines 28–9). She talks about how the settlers in the West Bank use up all the water and don’t leave much for the use of Palestinians (lines 21–22), and then the bad exploitative conditions Palestinian workers from Gaza (along with Thai foreign workers) have to endure when hired out of grave economic necessity to work in the agricultural settlements (lines 29–30). In the next excerpt, Mahdi Abd Al-Hadi, the Palestinian activist from Jerusalem who runs a research center, likens the word ‘peace’ to the word ‘prostitute.’ This was the only explicitly gendered reference to peace in my data. Excerpt #14 MAH: [Sigh] I don’t know there is many ways of describing it, but in our situation, today, after 30 years of occupation, you come to see that, it’s a word becoming like a prostitute. Everybody is using it, for different ways and means, which is ugly, which is very negative, and that’s why some people go to religion, and look for the word, and meaning, and values, in the faith, but not in politics, but not in daily life. For us today, it has been too much used, exactly as I’m saying, a prostitute, but everyone wants to sleep with it, with her, without admitting that he or she slept with it, at the same time using it, and paying, benefiting from it. It’s, it has a very negative, what you call reflections on one’s eyes, and one’s mind. Today of the 30 years of occupation, it lost many of its meanings, and many of its values, for the last 38 years, and whoever is using it now, he or she does not mean it, or do not really understand what does it mean, when you go to your house by the end of the day, of, after 18 working hours, and you want to have a relaxed dinner and sleepover, you think you are in a peace. There is fear, fear crippling people, understanding of the meaning of the word, or accepting the value of such a word, fear of the uncertainty, uncertainty you don’t know exactly what will happen to you, when you leave that house. You don’t know, if you’re going back to that house, not because of the many checkpoints, not because of the guns, of the three major G’s: gates, and gods, and

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guns, who are governing our life, with these three G’s, you come to realize what is peace. Peace when it comes to mind, becomes: army, soldiers, occupation, military checkpoints, bullets, tanks, stones, graffiti on the wall. All these images, and episodes of resistance, immediately come to one’s mind, when you mention the word peace, and I don’t think, there is people who really wrote something valuable of understanding the word. Maybe those like who contributed for the Nobel Peace Prize, in order to compensate for their sins in the world. This is the way of understanding it. I don’t know. It’s too many things of the one word. Abd Al-Hadi notes that the word ‘peace’ today is like a prostitute and can mean anything (lines 3–4). He then continues, ‘everyone wants to sleep with it, with her, without admitting that he or she slept with it’ (lines 9–10). So it acquired a negative meaning, but, as I said, his usage is very gendered, revealing perhaps a perspective that politics is masculine in essence. Abd Al-Hadi only sees the 38 years of occupation as a reality (lines 12–13), a reality which has a very negative effect on the lives of people. It brings uncertainty and fear (lines 18–24). He very poetically lists the daily reality of the occupation, what it means to ordinary people and how it constantly impedes the natural flow of their lives, such as going to work. He is also cynical about the Nobel Peace Prize and its recipients. In sum, peace means many negative things brought about because of the prolonged occupation. Note also that as a secular person, his perspective on religion is that it is where people search for values that are missing in their social lives because of the political situation (lines 5–7). Lastly, Abd Al-Hadi alludes to the notion that maybe people who contributed to the Nobel Prize know about peace (lines 30–33). One cannot escape the bitterness in Abd Al-Hadi’s comment, ‘in order to compensate for their sins in the world’ (lines 30–31). This fits into Blommaert and Verschueren’s (1999) discussion of diversity in European societies (in their case Belgian society), in which the concept of diversity is discussed by elite groups and not by ordinary immigrants, and therefore it subtly allows only a narrow space for discussion of immigration and multiculturalism in ways which preserve the hegemony of elite groups and reproduce

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unfavorable conditions for immigrant communities. What I mean by this comparison is that Abd Al-Hadi seems to acknowledge that the word ‘peace’ is imposed by the more powerful groups (identified only by contributing to the Nobel Peace Prize) and therefore it has limitations when it is brought up and used dialogically with the less powerful groups (such as the Palestinians). In the next excerpt Mohammad Zaidan, who runs a human rights center in Nazareth, brings us back to Isaiah’s linkage between peace and justice. To Zaidan justice is a requirement for achieving peace (lines 3–4). Excerpt #15 MZ: Peace, peace is, it, first of all, it is very related to human right. I don’t see basic human right, respect. I don’t see any peace without human right, respect, and I don’t see any human rights, respect without justice, and I think, if we want to be, to speak about the peace in general, not just in Palestine, we have to speak about justice. I don’t think there is any peace without justice. For the Palestinians, peace would mean that there is the historical justice, and there is more real politics justice, if you want, and I think, the Palestinian National Movement, and the Palestinian movement, have moved toward more real political justice, speaking about withdrawal from the occupied territories in 1967, and the right of return, which is one of the basic things, that I don’t think any solution could bring real peace, if it doesn’t include these two components, especially when we speak about more than half of the Palestinian people who will not live in peace, or taste the peace, if you want, without returning to their homes. Zaidan makes a distinction between absolute historical justice and real political justice (lines 7–8). He thinks that the Palestinian leadership is focusing on the latter at the moment. Therefore, they are negotiating a state within the 1967 boundaries and for compensation for the refugees. In other words, he thinks that a changed perspective on the meaning of justice has resulted in new moves on the part of Palestinian

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leadership. To Zaidan, peace is ultimately about human rights respect (lines 1–2) and that doesn’t happen without carrying a sense of justice at the same time (line 4).

On terrorism Two interviewees directly tackled the issue of terrorism (Yael Dayan from Tel Aviv, and Samira Khouri from Nazareth). I will present each perspective in the following section. I had asked Dayan the question whether the public was behind the government with regard to the Oslo Accords. Her response was positive (she was a member of the Knesset at that point). Excerpt #16 CS: Um, my last question is, when Oslo, around the time of the Oslo Accords, how much do you think the a public opinion, how much the government looked into the public opinion in polls and what the public wanted? YD: I think the public wanted what they got, and the disappointment was when terror began. This was before the assassination of Rabin. I think even today, people are willing to, to take, to compromise, or to take more blows, if they know something good will come out of it, but there, it was beyond any explanation. The terror, the big, you know, buses in Tel Aviv, and so on. This was something that set back from an Israeli point of view. We lost the elections. We think after Rabin was killed, this would be, we would keep the government, but the reaction was not a, good riddance of Rabin, but how stupid we were to not to talk peace, while this horrible terror was getting stronger and stronger, and, I think that, the entire reaction to Oslo, bad reaction was. People in goodwill and good faith were supportive to it, and really thought this is, that’s it. We’ll do an interim and this, and that, and a few more meetings, and we’ll pull back, and there will be peace, and the fact that terror was then at its highest, and the world was not yet, you know, tuned to it, it was a shock to everybody, suicide bombing, was

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bombed here, and at that time, it was. Now OK, you say well, it may be, in London or Madrid, or wherever it become a part of, not acceptable, but people are aware of it, and, we the people here could not understand it, could not stomach it. They, they turned inwards, even the peace camps, sort of lost the energies that Oslo gave them, and this was, I mean, we’re still paying the price for it. To Dayan, terror comes from one direction, namely from the Palestinian suicide bombers Hamas recruited in order to shake the Oslo Accords which Hamas opposed. It is a perspective that still blames the Israeli peace camp because they showed hesitation too with regard to the Accords, after the suicide bombs. She thinks that the mistake of the Israeli peace camp was to give in to fear and to hesitate with regard to further negotiations with the Palestinians, which in turn brought an ultimate halt to any peace talks with the Palestinians (lines 11–16). In addition, to Dayan, there is no attempt at revisiting the terms of the Accords, to see if there was anything that prompted Hamas towards extreme actions. She further links Hamas’s actions to the more global picture of terrorism, thus emptying Hamas’s actions of any historic or political grievance. This is a similar perspective to that of many mainstream US politicians such as Bill Clinton (see Suleiman and O’Connell, 2007). She acknowledges that back then, when Hamas was sending suicide bombers, it was long before terrorism became a global issue (lines 20–26). I prompted Dayan further by asking her about why Hamas was doing what it was doing. Excerpt #17 CS: What do you think Hamas wanted? YD: I don’t know. I think they’re really unwelcoming, unwelcoming to, to peace in all the forms suggested, and this is their way, because you know, it’s not a small target like the Hezbollah wanted us out of Lebanon, OK, Hamas does not want us out of Gaza. They’ll, they still go for the entire a [brief telephone interruption], it’s a, I don’t know, we’re asking ourselves, because obviously it’s not enough for them to have a Palestine, because if

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they would have wanted a Palestine, they could have it. The latest in a, you know, before, Rabin was killed, when this started, so obviously that’s not what a, that’s where the hopes are not parallel in the Palestinian society, and the Hamas. What they want, they will not get. They will fight for, they will destroy. It’s like saying, ‘I will not have it, but I will prevent you from having it,’ and this is horrible. This is horrible. That’s perhaps, the most horrible disaster, to the Palestinians is not the Israeli occupation, which is terrible, and we all would like immediately to get rid of it, but the inside problem, is, is Hamas, because we have the, it makes everything, look trivial. Let’s say a scenario now, Israel is pulling out of Gaza, and of the West Bank. If there will be one Hamas man leader who will get up and say this is what we want, ‘We want you out, we want the occupation to end, and we want you out of to the pre ’67 borders,’ they don’t say. They say, ‘Even if this will happen, our fight is, until we get rid of you, totally,’ so this is you know, I don’t know how the Palestinians handle it, but they are not handling it sufficiently, and God forbid Hamas will win, in the sense, they will dictate it, with, because then, there will be as it is, they will think of Gaza is, is, a question mark. People are not very comfortable with it, because of the Hamas. Now, if they make it the way they want, it will be absolutely impossible to continue the process, in the West Bank, so this, I don’t know ... Dayan’s response on what she thinks Hamas wants, demonstrates a perspective that she doesn’t understand what Hamas wants. It is illogical and outside of any historical context that she could grasp. In contrast, Samira Khouri, who is a Palestinian from Nazareth and who works for peace from within the Israeli peace movement, highlights a particular incident of a suicide bombing, one in which the perpetrator was a woman. Khouri tells me the story which she also tells to her fellow Israeli Jewish women activists, in order to emphasize that even suicide bombing is an action that should be contextualized and understood as being motivated by specific concerns. Khouri does not defend it, but she brings the human face of misery behind it, just

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like the Nazareth director does when he tackles this sensitive issue with his Oscar-nominated movie Paradise Now. Excerpt #18 SK: I believe them, those who are working with us, but I tell you that whenever they say, they see that there is a bombing, they start their thoughts, and ask us [pause], ‘Are you continuing your work? Why they are doing this?’ We start, we bring them from there, to explain for them. Once we had a very big meeting for Jews, only we brought a woman from the occupied territory, from Ramallah. She told them the story of that lawyer, a woman lawyer who went and bombed in Tel Aviv, in one cafeteria, or something like this. She, they asked, ‘How is it that we called her friend?’ And she explained to them. She told them, you know, I want to tell you the story of that girl. Two brothers are in prison. Another one was killed. They came. She had another brother, but he is not living with them. She doesn’t know where he is. The army came, enter into the house, and they started to mix up all the furniture, mix up all the food, all the money, adas, zeit [groceries which people can store, such as lentils, or olive oil] all together. She was looking at him and she was only one girl in the house, four children and one girl, and she is a lawyer. When she saw the last thing, she was standing and waiting for them to finish, when she saw them coming to her father, her father an old man, sitting on the mattress, at the floor. They pulled him from the hair and took him out. ‘You must come with us, and show us where is your son,’ and he shouted, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,’ and she saw her father in such a case. They took him to prison. She knelt beside him and she told him ‘wihyatak baba, illa antiqim lak’ [Arabic for ‘I swear I will take revenge’]. The next day, she went and bombed herself. We told them the story. They wept as you are weeping now, and as we wept the same thing. We told them, ‘If you see a story in your families like this, what you can do?’ They did not say anything, so none of them are convinced, but

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they say, but it’s not good for them, we understand the problem, but all of the world, over the world, they say terrorists. They are killing innocent people ... Khouri tells me the story of the young Palestinian lawyer who became a suicide bomber. Khouri heard the story from a Palestinian activist from Ramallah who was a friend of the suicide bomber. The friend was invited by the women’s organization Khouri is active in, in order to present the human face of what is going on to a Jewish audience from the same organization (lines 4–6). This invitation was in response to Jewish women who work for peace, who want to understand why suicide bombing happens, and whether it is worth it for them to continue to pursue dialogue and understanding (lines 1–5). The story is told in the third person, namely, reporting what the friend of the suicide bomber was telling the Jewish audience. However, there are instances of constructed dialogue (Tannen, 1989), of crucial points throughout the retelling of the story to me. First, there is constructed dialogue of what the soldiers entering the suicide bomber’s house told her father: ‘you must come with us, and show us where is your son’ (lines 22–23). Second, we find constructed dialogue in the father’s response, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know’ (line 24); the repetition here is bringing the condensed emotions of the moment back to the present (even though Khouri was not the eyewitness of the exchange with the soldiers, nor did she know the suicide bomber herself). Third, the constructed dialogue of the suicide bomber-to-be. At that point, Khouri code-switches to Arabic: ‘wihyatak baba, illa antiqim lak’ (‘I swear I will take revenge,’ lines 26–7). The Arabic phrase is the climax of Khouri’s story. The resolution (Labov and Waletsky 1997 [1967]) comes as ‘the next day, she went and bombed herself’ (lines 27–8). Khouri then tells me that the story got the Jewish women to understand the context of devastation as a result of which suicide bombing happens. She reports to me that they cried (lines 28–9), and then she addresses me as ‘just like you are weeping now’ (lines 28–9). It is interesting to note that, even though Khouri was not the one telling the story to the Jewish women, she identifies strongly with it as she says ‘we told them the story’ (line 28).

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Conclusion All interviewees demonstrate a well thought-out idea of the meaning of peace. Being who they are, I am assuming this is not the first time somebody has interviewed them and asked them about the meaning of the word ‘peace.’ It is also, naturally, something they have thought about a lot. The picture which emerges from these brief excerpts is that of varying degrees of optimism or lack of optimism. In addition, I was initially looking for gendered perspectives on peace, but I could not say that gender and the perspective on peace is one-dimensional and easy to determine (except in one very obvious case). However, I could say with confidence that for the Palestinians from Nazareth and Jerusalem, peace is not about drawing a line on a map, just as in the earlier discussions of physical and social space. It is about basic human rights and the ability to live a good life. In sum, the perspectives that arise from first-hand experience of discrimination are different from the perspectives of those from the powerful group, but with empathy towards the others. For a Jewish activist, these are still secondhand stories. They can imagine how it feels to be occupied, but without experiencing it per se. As for Palestinians from Nazareth, only one of my interviewees lived through the trauma of 1948; however, for the rest, it is the trauma of their parents and close family members. Lastly, on the meaning of terrorism, juxtaposing Dayan’s and Khouri’s understanding of it reveals a gap in perspectives: Dayan sees it as something Palestinians (the ‘Other’) engage in, and she does not fully understand it, thus there is total distancing of self from the other, while Khouri is focused on the human crisis which brings about these acts of extremism. Khouri does not draw a line of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ but rather attempts to explain the dire military situation from which these acts emerge.

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7 ON THE GENDER ED NATUR E OF PALESTINIAN AND ISR AELI ACTIVISM

This chapter discusses the inherent tension between national and feminist projects in the Middle East as most countries were ridding themselves of colonialism in the past century. It also notes the ignoring or misunderstanding on the part of Western feminists of women’s strife in the east. In addition, the chapter discusses the historic phases of feminism in both the Palestinian and the Israeli contexts, and, lastly, the relationship of the two feminist movements towards each other. Literature notes that feminist demands in the Arab Middle East were tied to the nationalist movement right from the beginning of organized struggle against the colonial powers. Two expressions of feminist concerns should be noted: first tying the liberation of women to the liberation of the nation, hence the call for the education of women. Second, women became active advocates of the national cause. However, it is also noted that nationalistic projects are patriarchal in essence and therefore not necessarily concerned about women and their legal equal rights (see Müge Göçek and Balaghi, 1994; RanchodNilsson and Tétreault, 2000). Further, some nationalists identified the call for equality of women as a Western influence that should be ignored or treated cautiously. Much later, this position was also adopted by political groups with a religious outlook towards life, such as some Islamic political groups, hence the call for justice for

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women not equality per se. In this argument, men and women are different, and they are not supposed to be equal, but both should be treated justly by the legal system and by society at large (Abdel-Latif, 2007; Abulfadl, 2007). These groups attempt to adopt a rhetoric that they feel is not copied from Western feminist ideology, and which is authentic to their own culture. Therefore, to many Muslim women who advocate for women’s rights within an Islamic framework, they see their activism as liberating, authentic and radical in that it is changing gender relations, but in a way that is unique and special to Islamic societies. Thus, they do not see themselves as going back, but rather moving forward in a way that is radically different from the westernized advocacy of their mothers’ generation. For the sake of simplicity, I will attempt to find parallels with Western feminist scholarship. The first generation of Middle East feminists is perhaps best exemplified by Huda Shaarawi, the Egyptian feminist nationalist who concerned herself with women’s suffrage and charity work, which was generally an upper- and middle-class activity. But, in addition to the demand for the improvement of women’s lot, and the demand for more participation of women in public life, women like Huda Shaarawi, as I mentioned earlier, were also part of the nationalistic movements in their countries against colonization. The writer and activist Mayy Ziadah, the Nazareth-born Cairo intellectual (1886–1941), would be another example, a Virginia Woolf-style Arab intellectual. This wave was also infatuated with the West and Western ways; it was a generation of women who participated in the public reaction to colonialism and were simultaneously infatuated with colonial dominance and rejecting of it. A second generation is perhaps best exemplified (at least intellectually) by Nawal El-Saadawi in Egypt and Fatima Mernissi in Morocco. Saadawi perceives women’s lot as part of the dominance of the male patriarchy, encouraged by state and religious institutions. Mernissi, whom I classify along with Saadawi, is less radical and more into deconstructing how Islam as a religious law developed throughout the centuries through the ranks of the male patriarchy to become the shape it is now: in other words, how the Shari’a law (developed by males) generally held women inferior as it evolved historically from medieval times.

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However, both Saadawi and Mernissi had to react to the encounter with Western feminism. The encounter revealed much prejudice on the part of Western women (see Saadawi, 1997b). Attending a conference on women in the 1970s at Wellesley, Saadawi and Mernissi said that the conference was a reflection and reproduction of the power relation between Western countries and the rest of the world, as well as a reflection of the postcolonial economic division between the West and East, or as Saadawi argues between North and South. To Saadawi, this type of power structure creates an affinity between people (and women) from all the formerly colonized countries. A third wave of Arab feminists, in spite of their diversity, have generally challenged Western views of modernity and what is expected of modern women. They are less infatuated with the West and more into expressing their distinctive character and identity as different from Western identity. Some of the discourse is laced with a more visible Islamic life too, but some have a secular outlook as well. Lara Deeb (2006), studying women activists in the Lebanese Hezbollah, asked the question ‘Why are women the measure of modernity?’ Her answer was because the discourse of modernity is complex and contradictory at the same time. She found, for example, that Hezbollah’s women use measures of modernity that are Western, but at the same time, they also contest them. Religious organization for Hezbollah women is an act of modernity and not tradition. In addition, Deeb found that Hezbollah women categorize the West monolithically, while at the same time criticizing the lack of recognition within Western discourse of distinct and diverse communities within Islam. Deeb’s research explores many assumptions about Muslim, Arab or Middle Eastern women. In many ways, her work further tests the validity of the post-Foucauldian subject. Foucault challenged the post-Enlightenment Western epistemology of the individual as autonomous and free. Deeb’s research compels us to reconsider the relation of dependency on the West of the epistemology of the individual in the Orient. In other words, it compels us as researchers to examine what Firdous Al-Azim (1993) already noted, that the Western free-willed individual was historically measured against a dependent, more traditional Easterner. What happens when the Easterner happens to be a religious woman from Lebanon’s Hezbollah?

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The Palestinian and Israeli contexts ‘First writing since’ I do not know how bad a life has to break in order to kill. I have never been so hungry that I willed hunger. I have never been so angry as to want to control a gun over a pen. Not really. Even as a woman, as a Palestinian, as a broken human being. Never this broke. (Hammad:, 2005: 90) Simone de Beauvoir, reflecting on her visit with Sartre to Egypt and Israel right after the 1967 Six Day War, comments that after the Vietnam War, the Six Day War was the event that affected her most in the late 1960s (de Beauvoir, 1974: 364). For the next 45 pages, when the plight and the misery of the Palestinians is mentioned, it is in regard to a visit to a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. This was considered by de Beauvoir as a political stunt by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the President of Egypt, to enhance the political position of Egypt. She and Sartre visited Nazareth and an Arab deputy minister showed them around. She did not suspect anything was amiss with the state of the Arabs in Israel. Further, she did not even notice that the deputy minister was going to give her the official Israeli line, as he owed his job to his loyalty to the state of Israel. He was going to erase anything negative, as the state, right from the start, manipulated and controlled its Arab citizens and considered them clients more than anything else (see Cohen, 2004). And I wonder, why was de Beauvoir – who spoke against the French occupation of Algeria as well as leaving her impact on the feminist movement – why was she so oblivious, blind and one-sided when it came to the plight of the Palestinians? How would she react, for example, to the poem of Hammad, the young Palestinian poet from New York? Was there a Palestinian plight, historically bound and contextualized, in de Beauvoir’s mind or was it invisible to her? And, lastly, how would she react to the critical feminist scholarship emerging since the 1980s in both Israel and Palestine?

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Palestine Nahla Abdo (1994), among others, divides Palestinian women’s activism into three historic phases: 1) Phase 1 (1920–49) – in which only the participation of elite women in the 1920s and 1930s was valued, while the participation of peasant women, particularly during the 1936–9 revolt, was ignored or dismissed by Palestinian nationalists and writers alike (Abdo, 1994: 154). In other words, the general politics was that of the urban notables, primarily ‘men urban notables,’ but with a space preserved for women from the social elite. This is no different from the context of early nationalist struggles in places like Egypt; 2) Phase 2 (after the 1948 Nakba, until the occupation of all of historic Palestine in 1967) – Palestinian women participants in international conferences insisted that their struggle as a nation comes before their struggle as women (Abdo, 1994: 154); 3) Phase 3 (from 1967 until the first intifada in 1987) – it became clear that ‘women’s oppression cannot be isolated from the larger structural conditions under which they live. It is also true that their emancipation is dialectically linked to the emancipation and development of their society as a whole’ (Abdo, 1994: 154). In Abdo’s opinion, it was only during the late 1970s (when political activism penetrated all levels of society through the PLO) that Palestinian women were able to link their feminist agenda with the national agenda (1994: 159). However, Abdo notes that the situation in Gaza is different from the West Bank in that Gaza is much more economically depressed and marginalized (1994: 162). Abdo considers any national project to be at odds with feminism, simply because ‘nationalism is not about gender’ (1994: 150, see also Ranchod-Nilsson and Tétreault, 2000: 11 for a similar argument). In addition, for Abdo (1994), the first intifada created new spheres for activities for Palestinian women’s participation in public life which resulted in their increased visibility on the national front. Abdo is

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convinced that this situation will prevent women from going back to the ‘kitchen,’ in spite of the threat from Islamists and in contrast to what happened in similar struggles, such as that of the Algerians against France. Further, during the first phase of activism, it was considered prestigious to include names of women from the Palestinian aristocracy, even if these women did not set foot in any of these organizations. In other words, elite women’s participation was symbolic, rather than real (see Tuqan, 1992 [1987]). During the second phase, women concentrated their activism on relief and welfare in the refugee camps. As for the third phase, women’s activism became more politically oriented, as they became members in popular committees under the umbrella of the PLO (Sharoni 1995: 58–75; see also Kawar, 1996; Sabbagh, 1998b; Sayigh, 1992). This phase witnessed participation of women in large numbers (Warnock, 1990: 181). However, the return of the PLO leadership to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1990s, marginalized the political efforts of the West Bankers and the Gazans (including the political efforts of West Bank and Gaza women) (Sharoni, 1995: 75). Amal Kawar (1996) ties the distinctive character of each phase of Palestinian activism to a place in Palestine or the diaspora. The aftermath of 1948 directed the women’s movement to work providing relief to the refugee community. However, their activism was tied in with any particular phase the Palestinian national movement was going through. With the rise of the PLO, women’s activism was first focused in cities like Amman up until 1970 and then in Beirut. After the expulsion of the PLO from Lebanon in 1982, women’s activism focused on the West Bank and Gaza, with Jerusalem being the center of these activities and with close ties to the headquarters of the PLO in Tunis. The Women’s Committee Movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip generally included urban middle-class women (Kawar, 1996: 100). The oldest women’s committee group was founded by Zahira Kamal (one of my interviewees) in 1978: ‘Union of Women Action Committee’. Kamal was a leading figure in the Popular Democratic Front, and she is now leader of the Palestinian Democratic Union Party, ‘Fida.’ Her party split after a conflict over the peace process in 1991, but it

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now includes village and working women and not just middle-class housewives. Kamal was considered too radical in the eyes of the late Samiha Khalil, a leading figure in Palestinian politics who represented the second phase of Palestinian women’s activism (Kawar, 1996: 103). Kamal’s reaction to Khalil’s criticism is that women are sometimes more oppressive of women than men are (Kawar, 1996: 104). During the second and third phases the center of activities became Jerusalem and Nablus on the one hand and Gaza on the other (less so Jerusalem as of now). Note the absence of any inclusion of the legal struggle of Palestinian women inside Israel in Kawar’s account (and generally others). However, Samira Khouri from Nazareth, as she noted to me, started her activism as early as the 1950s. However, the public activism of women meant more detentions and interrogations by the Israeli authorities (Kawar, 1996: 113). This allowed some Palestinian women entering adulthood during the 1960s and 1970s to take pride in having been to an Israeli prison. For example, Hanan Ashrawi, as well as Zahira Kamal, publicly express their pride in having been arrested (see Ashrawi, 1995; and on Kamal see Lipman, 1988: 54–6). But this was not possible in the more conservative Nazareth, where Abdo felt ashamed and no longer able to continue to live there (Abdo, 2002). Further, it seems that Palestinian women had to articulate their demands for equal rights under the umbrella of the national struggle. To Kitty Warnock (1990), there are two reasons for that: the immediacy of the demand of the struggle, and the fact that ‘national political action is a goal acceptable to Palestinian society, including men, whereas the equality of women for its own sake would be harder to accept’ (Warnock, 1990: 72). This has led veteran Palestinian activist Zahira Kamal to state: ‘we do not have a feminist movement ... the woman’s movement is the national movement’ (Rubenberg, 2001: 223). This also resulted in two political routes for the expression of women’s activism: either Islamic activism or that tied to popular committees more locally, and organized from the cities (Rubenberg, 2001: 29). However, in the 1980s, it seemed to Warnock that most Palestinian women were seeking emancipation and participation in public life through a secular framework (1990: 71).

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Israel As for the Israeli women’s movement, Simona Sharoni (1995) divides its activism into the following chronological phases: 1) Phase 1 (1911–48) – women were part of the labor force in the new home, as well as the bearers of the national symbols; 2) Phase 2 (1948–67 and through the 1970s) – Sharoni (1995: 95) calls this period that of the ‘militarization of women’s lives.’ Israel as a state overemphasized its security and that was the only acceptable national discourse, so women who wanted to participate in politics had to join in the dominant nationalistic discourse of militarism; 3) Phase 3 (1977–82 and through the 1980s) – the women’s movement in Israel was a reflection of the second wave of feminism in the USA. American migrants to Israel brought with them ideas about women’s liberation which they treated as universal, and therefore did not attempt to adjust to the reality of Israel and Israeli women, hence they did not express the particularities of the grievances of women in Israel by and large. This phase is best exemplified by the activism of Marcia Freedman, who attempted to cross national boundaries in order to promote women’s issues in a universal sense; 4) Phase 4 (1987–90 and through the 1990s) – this later period pushed Israeli women towards organizing themselves to push for peace and dialogue with Palestinians. This period witnessed the establishment of women’s organizations such as ‘Women in Black,’ which promoted dialogue with Palestinians as well as organizing protests against the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Gila Svirsky, one of my interviewees, is a co-founder of ‘Women in Black.’ In 1973, Shulamit Aloni, one of my interviewees, established the Citizen’s Rights Movement. She invited the women’s movement headed by Marcia Freedman to support her. Freedman became a Knesset member as a result. But there was a lot of tension between Freedman and Aloni as a result of their different visions of political activism.

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Freedman ran for the Knesset in 1977 by herself and lost. The reason her campaign failed was her ignoring of the national boundaries in her call for the Arab sisters to join the struggle of women (Sharoni, 1995:103). While Freedman saw peace as a women’s issue, Aloni saw her party as promoting citizen’s rights and not women’s rights in particular (Sharoni, 1995: 103; see also Swirski, 1991: 295–9; for more general discussion of the phases of the Israeli women’s movement see Katz, 2003; Magno, 2002; Svirsky, 2003). In 1978, the first women’s conference was held in Beersheva (an economically disadvantaged city in the Negev), which also marked a turning point in the movement. Even the choice of the city was symbolic of this turning point (Sharoni, 1995). The Israeli women’s movement started to include more voices from marginalized groups such as Mizrachi women and Arab Israeli women. Another turning point was the Lebanon war in 1982, many women organized to express publicly their opposition to the war. Women (such as Yael Dayan, one of my interviewees) also joined the peace movement. Thus, women continued to organize against the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip when the intifada started in 1987, and also to express support of the intifada as well as the Palestinian women’s struggle.

The Palestinian and Israeli women’s movements in the context of their relationship to each other Nationalism and feminism are tied historically in colonized contexts because the liberation of women was generally perceived as the first step towards liberation and progress as a nation, as the example of Egypt (Moghadam, 1994: 3) shows. Thus, Third World gender identity includes ‘strong nationalist and anticolonial elements’ (Müge Göçek and Balaghi, 1994: 7). However, at the same time, women’s movements grew to be more mistrustful of nationalistic projects (Moghadam, 1994: 3). Women were assigned a particular role in the national struggle as mothers and as keeping the family together – in the Palestinian context for example (see Peteet, 1991). However, Peteet (1991) argues that women’s activism in the Palestinian context is classed too. Peasant women in

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camps were assigned a particular role (reproduction and motherhood), whereas urban women in Lebanon and in the West Bank ended up at the top of organizations (NGOs and welfare organizations) and these urban women tended to look down on and patronize village and camp women (see Peteet [1991] for Lebanon, and Rubenberg [2001] for the West Bank). Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis (1995: 1) find commonality between Israel and other settler societies as they all involve migration of groups from Europe. They state that in settler societies the process of nation-building involves four sources of symbolic myths: resources associated with the hegemonic collectivity such as language (1995: 20), a national collectivity different from that of the one in the mother country, and reinterpreting indigenous cultural elements into their own (1995: 23) – in the case of Israel appropriating some elements of the Palestinian architecture, food, handicraft and language resources, and, lastly, new arrivals to the settler community have to assimilate (1995: 23). Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis also state that ‘the paradox of settler societies is that they simultaneously resisted and accommodated the authority of imperialist Europe’ (1995: 2). To use Butler’s terminology, a subversion of meaning occurs in which the indigenous meaning is assimilated and adopted by the newcomer culture. However, Butler would see this subversion as challenging the settler culture and empowering the less powerful group. Here we see this process working in the opposite direction, namely to legitimize the presence and the new identity of the newcomer culture. Further, they argue that ‘hegemonic myths are gendered as well as racialized’ (Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis, 1995: 8). Imperialism created new identities and new struggles across gender and across communities (1995:13). Settler women were burdened twice: by having to be part of the economic force as in agriculture and household care. They were also burdened with the task of nation building (1995: 14). Lastly, racial discourse involved ‘modes of exclusion, inferiorization, subordination and exploitation’ of other peoples with which they compare themselves (1995: 23). In addition, Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis (1995) touch on issues that Clifford Geertz (1971: 63) raised earlier on with regard to colonialism

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and nationalism in Morocco and Indonesia. Geertz argues that the interaction of the local culture with colonial powers created ‘a unique, if not a bizarre political situation.’ He also argues that in both societies culture can be understood across three dimensions: scholarly Islam, colonialism and local nationalism (Geertz, 1971: 62). The resulting political system created a colonial culture that is not Moroccan or Indonesian, but Mauresque or Indische (1971: 64). The adoption and accommodation of cultural elements by the colonialists created a new hybrid cultural product. The same is true in the case of early Jewish immigrants to Palestine. While drawing a line between ‘us’ and ‘them’ the locals, settlers simultaneously adopted aspects of Arab local culture such as the embroidery, architecture, food and language. Some early Hebrew words for common everyday usage were drawn from Palestinian Arabic usages (as Ben Yihuda’s early Hebrew dictionary shows, 1940 [1910]). However, this was an ambivalent nationalistic stance, as Gil (2006) demonstrates and which I discussed more broadly earlier on. According to Abdo and Yuval-Davis, the political economy of the Zionist settlement involved: the conquest of the land (1995: 297), the conquest of labor (1995: 300) and the conquest of the market (1995: 304). Israeli women were allowed to vote after a long struggle prior to the establishment of Israel. However, since the 1970s there has been a tension between women who want to focus on the legal and institutional aspect of ‘women’s issues’ – akin to the second wave feminist movement in the USA – and women who thought that ‘women’s issues’ should be fought for from within the particularity of Israeli social and political life and not from an idealistic and universalistic point (Abdo and Yuval-Davis, 1995: 313). Thus, during the first Palestinian intifada in 1987, Israeli women organized themselves into groups which identified with the Palestinian struggle such as Women in Black (Abdo and Yuval-Davis, 1995: 314). As for the Palestinian women in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to Abdo and Yuval-Davis their agenda was tied to the national agenda, and in the 1970s, as discussed earlier in this chapter ‘the General Union of Palestinian Women emerged as an arm of the PLO’ (1995: 314). The movement was still an urban elite women’s

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movement, in spite of their attempt to reach out to rural and refugee camp women (1995: 315). Sheila Katz argues that early European settlers saw their mission as one of civilizing the new countries; for example, one of their activities was to teach and encourage lace work and embroidery by poor Jewish women from Arab countries, and by poor Arab women (2003: 116). Gender became part of the conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine (2003: 134). ‘In texts of both nations, women appear to represent motherhood, sexuality, proof of equality, civilizers and makers of difference and power’ (2003: 174). Katz concludes that power relations between Arab and Jewish women remain hard to understand, as they draw from the complexity of both societies and their relational struggle (2003: 165). Researchers argue that both the Palestinian and the Jewish women’s movements led parallel struggles at their inception. For example, in 1929 the first Palestinian Arab women’s congress of Muslims and Christians from the urban upper and middle classes was held (Katz, 2003: 156). Immediately, the Egyptian women’s movement supported it (Badran, 1995). This coincided with the fifth wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine, in 1932–9. This wave included wealthy middleclass immigrants. Women in this wave pushed for the right to vote and succeeded in getting it (Katz, 2003: 129). Sharoni (1995: 35) argues that: ‘despite significant difference in context, women in both Palestinian and Israeli cases were encouraged to participate in nationalist projects but were publicly praised only when they participated as women.’ Sharoni is aware that her view is both an insider/outsider view at the same time (1995: 3). She tries to find similarities between gendered relations of the Israeli and the Palestinian struggles, despite one being occupied by the other (1995: 36). Israeli collective nationalism focuses on issues of security, whereas Palestinian collective nationalism focuses on national liberation (Sharoni, 1995: 36). The excessive Israeli focus on security led Marcia Freedman to claim that Israel is a country where women’s liberation is seen as a national threat and as contradictory to its national struggle (see Sharoni, 1995: 40). On the other hand, citing Deniz Kandiyoti, Sharoni says Palestinian women still argue that their liberation and

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national liberation are interdependent (1995:50). Palestinian women vowed not to forget what happened to Algerian women after independence (Sharoni, 1995: 50; see also Abdo, 1994). However, the popular committees built through the 1970s found it hard to continue their work when the Oslo process sidelined these committees and ignored their work (Sharoni, 1995: 85). Women’s organizations found it hard to continue their work, but new NGOs emerged, encouraged by Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority and financed by the European Union. This total control of organizations, including women’s organization by the Palestinian Authority, led Langohr (2004: 185) to call the process the ‘Arafatization’ of NGOs. One of the early accounts shattering the myth of Kibbutz life, and thus showing the Israeli reality with regard to equality of men and women, was written by Rachel Persico. Persico, having grown up in a Kibbutz in the 1950s, challenged the idea of gender equality in the Israeli Kibbutz as her lived reality drove her to the conclusion that ‘the inequality between men and women dominated every aspect of our life, though it was never acknowledged as such’ (1994: 115). Men in the army, for example, did the most dangerous tasks and women only had supportive roles (Persico, 1994: 118). Today, this account is established as factual. During the first and second intifada, when Palestinian and Israeli women met, the Palestinians wanted the Israeli women to express their support of the intifada. However, Israeli women had a different vision of the encounter. They saw it as merely social, that they’re there to express shared experiences of womanhood and so on (Golan-Agnon, 2002: 107, 114, 120; Sharoni, 1995: 136). Dafna Golan-Agnon (2002: 127–31), an Israeli activist in the Jerusalem Link (an umbrella organization for Israeli and Palestinian women’s cooperation formed after the Oslo Accords) poignantly expresses her deep hurt that when Israeli women, including herself, visited their Palestinian ‘friends,’ the Palestinians never offered them food. The response of one of her Palestinian friends was, ‘We don’t want to be Mohammad who serves you hummus,’ in reference to the exploitation of Palestinians in the Israeli economy, and Palestinian males reduced to serving hummus, a Middle East dish, in Israeli restaurants (Golan-Agnon, 2002: 128). Golan-Agnon adds

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that while she and her Jewish friends wanted to talk about feminism, the Palestinian women wanted to talk about prisoners and curfews (Golan-Agnon, 2002: 131). Golan-Agnon (2002), in addition, describes the tensions involved between Israeli and Palestinian women planning joint activities, such as a festival on ‘sharing Jerusalem’ funded by the European Union in 1997, marking 30 years of the occupation of Jerusalem. She had to cross out a sentence by Amneh Badran (one of my Palestinian interviewees) on every one of the 10,000 invitation cards, and she didn’t understand why her Palestinian friend became angry with her (Golan-Agnon, 2002: 109). What Badran did was to add to the invitation statement about ‘sharing Jerusalem’ the phrase ‘as second choice for us Palestinians of Jerusalem.’ In the general sense, Golan-Agnon (2002) documents the meetings of Israeli and Palestinian activists, the good and the bad moments, as well as the tensions involved. I find this documentation both honest and profoundly affected by a power structure similar to that discussed by Saadawi (1997b) and others with regard to white American feminists meeting with ‘Third World feminists.’ Golan-Agnon (2002: 110), for example, already finds significance in the fact that while the Palestinian and Israeli women were meeting to plan the Jerusalem festival, Palestinian women always invited men to the meetings as well. This act, among others, confirmed to Golan-Agnon what she already knows: that Palestinian women have a more difficult position with regard to men in their society than Israeli women have. She also points out that the number of Israeli women participating in meetings was always larger than that of Palestinian women (2002: 109). Lastly, discussions of women’s activism, whether in Israel, or in the Palestinian diaspora in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, or among the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, leave out Palestinian women inside Israel. However, they are members of a community which constitutes roughly one-fifth of Israel’s population. These women’s activism follows the political involvement of the rest of the Palestinian community inside Israel. Namely, many PalestinianIsraelis became members of the Communist Party. The Communist Party was binational and Arabs found in it a legal venue for their grievances. One of my interviewees, Samira Khouri from Nazareth,

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started her political activism as a member of the Communist Party (literary names such as Mahmoud Darwish, Emile Habibi and many others had the same start). However, in the late 1970s and early 1980s Islamic parties also started to gain a following among Arabs in Israel. The overt participation of women in Israel in the Islamic movement has yet to become evident.

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8 FEMINISM – NATIONALISM: ANY CONTR ADICTION?

In this chapter, I analyze the activists’ positions on the question of whether being male or female has any impact on political activism. I start with the Jewish activists and move to the Palestinians. It seems that within each society there is an internal debate about the gender roles in activism, however, for both peoples, it also seems that women had to face the gender question more often than men, even though activists from both sexes gave illuminating responses. Within the Jewish community the perspectives vary from the denial of any impact of gender (as in the case of Shulamit Aloni), to ambivalence (as in the case of Naomi Chazan), to having an advantage (Gila Svirsky), or disadvantage (as in the case of Ilan Pappé). In the Palestinian community of both Jerusalem and Nazareth, the perspectives are those of being disadvantaged as a male (Mohammad Zaidan), to being disadvantaged as being from an old feudal family and not because of gender (Mahdi Abd Al-Hadi), to measuring activism (with regard to national or feminist awareness) by its practical achievements on the ground (Samira Khouri). Julie Peteet (1991: 96–7) observes that the Palestinian women’s movement is primarily nationalist, then feminist, like other feminist movements in the Arab world during the struggle for independence. Many others make the same observation (Badran, 1995: 71; Sabbagh, 1998a: 19). However, the literature also notes that, after independence,

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in many Arab countries the newly emerging state institutions ignored women’s contribution, nor did they fulfill any of their demands (see for example Badran, 1995: 92). A glaring example was the Algerian process of independence. Many women fighters found themselves abandoned and forgotten after independence. Palestinian women have stated that they don’t want to become like the Algerian women (see Abdo, 1994). Some scholars attribute this unease with women after independence to the incompatibility between nationalism and feminism (see Moghadam, 1994; Ranchod-Nilsson and Tétreault, 2000). However, Palestinian women are well aware of the historic record of women in independence movements in other Arab contexts, and they express a resistance to that fate (see Abdo, 2002, among others). In women’s and national conferences in the 1990s, special attention was given to women’s role. For example, in the 1994 draft of principles of women rights, the women’s struggle is articulated as follows: The Palestinian women’s struggle has been depicted over decades of the Palestinian national struggle as an immeasurable contribution in all spheres; women were martyred and thousands imprisoned. Palestinian women also played a vital role in the preservation of the unity of the Palestinian family as a social base to support individuals in the absence of a Palestinian national authority. Palestinian women were forced to delay many tasks associated with their social position and instead focus all their attention towards the issues of the national and political struggle. It is time that the issue of women’s legal rights in all aspects became a cornerstone for building a democratic Palestinian society. (Draft Document of Principles of Women’s Rights 1994, cited in Kawar, 1996: 125, emphasis mine) In addition, the tension between nationalism and feminism has been most articulated when women from the Arab world and other ‘Third World countries’ met in international feminist conferences. Their nationalistic concerns were generally ignored, minimized, and misunderstood (Badran, 1995: 70, 108). More recent conference attendees from the

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Middle East complain about the replication of the global relation between North and South in those microcosms of conferences (see Ahmed, 1999; Saadawi, 1997a, 1997b). Some Israeli women noted that when they met with Palestinian women, Palestinians pressed their national issues, whereas Israelis wanted to connect as women (see Golan-Agnon, 2002). I also heard echoes of these power structures, which yield different perspectives on the meetings and the priorities of meetings, from the many Palestinian women activists I met. The pressing issue for Palestinian women is that if they focus primarily on women’s rights, they run the risk of becoming irrelevant to the general politics of national liberation. This risk may not be on the same scale for Israeli women (although when a Jewish woman ran for the Knesset in 1977 in the name of both Arab and Jewish women in Israel, she was marginalized and did not get elected; see Swirski, 1991: 295–9). They already have their state, and therefore they can more fully represent their own issues. Nonetheless, to varying degrees, some of them expressed their dilemmas too. Yuval-Davis (2003: 7) claims that it is easier for women to cross the national boundaries into the other side, precisely because they are marginalized in their respective societies: On the one hand, women belong and are identified as members of the collectivity in the same way that men are. Nevertheless, there are always rules and regulations – not to mention perceptions and attitudes – specific to women. Such constructions involve a paradoxical positioning of women as both symbols and ‘others’ of the collectivity. On the one hand women are seen as signifiers of the collectivity’s honor ... At the same time they are a nonidentical element within the collectivity and subject to various forms of control in the name of ‘culture and tradition’ ... this constructs women as embodiments of collectivity boundaries but at the same time might make it easier for women to transcend and cross boundaries and engage in dialogical transversal politics. (Yuval-Davis, 2003: 4, last accessed November 11, 2004) We want to see how both women and men reflect these dilemmas, if they do at all.

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In the remainder of this chapter, I will present my interviewees’ perspectives on gender and nationalism, highlighting their responses to my question on whether they think being a man or a woman is an advantage for their activism, and finally concluding with some supportive evidence regarding the dilemma that some Palestinian women writers face.

Data analysis To Shulamit Aloni, the human rights lawyer and former education minister during Rabin’s premiership in the 1990s, being a woman or a man is irrelevant to the type of activism she is involved in. She is a fighter for human rights, and that in principle does not exclude anybody. Excerpt #1 CS: Do you think being a woman gives you an advantage in your work? SA: It doesn’t give advantage, and doesn’t, stop me. I, I, I never had the feeling that what I’m doing is as a woman, I am doing as a person as somebody who cares, and I believe in my, at least in my case, I was accepted this way, as a person who fights for what she believes, and the question if I am a woman or a man didn’t play here any, any important thing, but I put some, a lot of effort to work together with women, and to make them, to be involved. It is a separate link ... Aloni does not think being a woman puts her in a position different than that of men (lines 3–4). Her response to my question was instant. ‘I never had the feeling like what I’m doing as a woman, I am doing as a person’ (lines 3–5), ‘I was accepted this way’ (line 6). In other words, she did not feel that being a woman played any role whatsoever. She goes on to say that nonetheless she worked with women to promote their issues (lines 7–8). Biographically speaking, after establishing her citizens’ rights movement in 1973, Aloni sought the support of the women’s movement. As a result, the head of the women’s movement, the American Marcia Freedman, became a member of the Knesset. But the relationship between Aloni and Marcia Freedman was tense,

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as they did not agree on basic issues. Aloni put human rights first, thus including women’s rights within a larger vision of citizenship, while Freedman put women’s rights first, and therefore she felt that Aloni was not truthful to her and her movement. This resulted in Freedman running for the Knesset separately in 1977 and losing her seat (see Swirski, 1991: 295–9). Freedman tried to cross national boundaries by promoting women’s rights in their universality and failed. Aloni fought to promote human rights without any discrimination by age, gender, faith, or ethnicity, and therefore was more effective as a politician. Here we notice the consistency of Aloni’s perspective on human rights, 30 years after she established her citizens’ rights movement. Aloni in the next excerpt still insists that neither ‘women’s issues’ nor ‘peace issues’ takes priority. Excerpt #2 CS: When you worked in the government, and, and, the Knesset, what, is there a, if there is a priority between women, equal rights for women, in Israel and peace activism, where would you, how would you have done it? SA: Now there is no priority. You have to do the two of them, and one is completely connected to the other, completely connected, because you go to the [pounding on table] basic human rights, and basic human rights means that every human being have, do, do, regardless of, has the right for freedom, has the right for education, has the right for respect, for work, for, let’s go to the, let’s go to the way Roosevelt say, the four basic things: freedom of faith, freedom of speech, freedom from want, and freedom from fear, and those four basic freedoms, every human being, he is entitled to do, from fear and want and speech and faith, so this is, this is one thing. The second thing is every, every group, every ethnic group, every unity of people, has the right for self-determination. I think we are heroic. We see colonialism, the most brutal colonialism which was very effective and legitimate in the nineteenth century, but since I would say, since the first the end of the First World War, it was stopped. Sure it was

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stopped after the Second World War. You don’t have, don’t have any more imperialistic attitudes, and no one respects them, there is a new imperialism which is an economic one, but is another problem. CS: How do you find your voice in the middle of you know nationalism at its height? SA: How do I find my voice I hope they listen to me but I never I never stopped so not you know I belong to a minority but I say that. CS: [Laughter] SA: Copernicus was also in a minority and Galileo was also in a minority so [laughter] I’m not afraid of being in a minority. In other words, when I asked Aloni further, whether while working in the Knesset she prioritized her activism (lines 1–4), she affirmed that there are no priorities, that she worked for peace and for women’s rights without any prioritizing because what underlies activism for both is the same human issue (lines 5–24). Aloni, in her 80s, is still a very intense person, a convinced humanist, she even pounded on the table to emphasize her meaning when she insisted that her work is about ‘basic human rights’ (line 8). However, in an earlier email, she confesses that women are more vulnerable than men as they are the ones who have to deal with the consequences of the wars men wage. In addition, Aloni, in an earlier email to me (August 25, 2004) expressed the following: My real motivation is to work with anybody who is ready to promote the peace process. Women dedicate themselves more to this subject, they are more sensitive and most importantly they are not generals that praise themselves in battles and usually after the war, the women are the ones who have to rebuild the family from ashes. I had asked her in the email whether she has a preference working with men or with women for sake of peace. She acknowledges the patriarchal

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structure of society which puts men in positions of decision-making and of military actions. To her, women are more dedicated to peace, as they are not the general in the army. Not being a general is seen definitely as an advantage. In contrast, Naomi Chazan, a Knesset member from Aloni’s party during Rabin’s premiership in the 1990s and a political science professor, recognizes that women are not in high positions in the army, and therefore is active in promoting women in the air force (as we will see in excerpt #5, lines 3–13). In principle, women should be equal to men at all levels according to Chazan. Excerpt #3 CS: Do you think you have an, an advantage, because you’re a woman? NC: I’m, I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I mean I, I think there’s certain advantages that women have, I think it comes, looking for compromise, and looking for some kind of a, understanding, and reconciliation, is pretty obvious to most women. They do it all the, every day. I think women have been victims of this situation, so they’re, and they’re victims of their own society, so sensitivity to discrimination is, injustice, occupation. I think is, something that many women can, can identify with, on the one hand. I, I, I’m very clear on the one hand. On the, on the other hand, women are marginalized in the society, our capacity to influence decision-making, is very limited, and on these matters of war and peace and security et cetera, the discourse is dominated by men, and the, and the women are considered to be sort of non-expert in these areas, which I reject, but it doesn’t mean that that’s not a real situation that exists, so, and on one sense, we have more leeway, and the other sense, we’re ignored systematically, so it’s not a simple situation. I had heard that Chazan supports women in the air force from Ilan Pappé. Pappé (excerpt #11, lines 4–11) was puzzled and commented that he lacked understanding of how this can happen. Namely, how can one be a peace activist and at the same time push for more

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representation of women in the air force (the elite unit of the military apparatus)? Chazan denies that there is a contradiction. To her, she will promote women’s issues to their fullest, but at the same time she will work for peace. I doubt that Aloni would take a similar perspective. To my question whether she is advantaged or disadvantaged working for peace and being a woman (lines 1–2, excerpt #3), Chazan did not give an unequivocal answer as Aloni did. ‘I’m, I’m not sure, I’m not sure. I mean I, I’ (line 3), perhaps revealing a perspective that is not entirely comfortable with both projects as she took them upon herself, because of an inherent contradiction between peace activism as she envisions it (with the preservation of the Jewish character of Israel, as discussed in the previous chapter), and women’s roles in society. However, Chazan expresses that women are better at reconciliation (lines 5–6), when it comes to peace, because of their position in their societies, being victims of male dominance in varying degrees (lines 7–8). To most women, their treatment in society is unjust, and therefore, they can relate to the injustice of a people being under occupation (lines 9–10). In other words, an Israeli woman’s perspective on occupation is that of understanding because both being a woman and being under occupation involve a measure of injustice. But, on the other hand, because women are marginalized, their activism is less valued in their own societies (lines 11–19). She concludes: ‘it is not a simple situation’ (line 19). In the next excerpt, I press Chazan further on what she thinks of women’s activism in the settler movement. Excerpt #4 CS: How do you explain, you know, some of the people who are active in the settler movement, women, outspoken women? NC: Very outspoken women, well oh they’re not a majority. CS: No? NC: I think in the peace, women, in Israel the women, are a majority, in the right-wing movements, they’re very outspoken women, but they’re definitely not a majority, and I, I, I won’t

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begin to explain to them. My job is to isolate them, not to explain them ... CS: The women? NC: In the, on the right, but you’ll find women everywhere. I mean there’s nothing new about that. It’s a question of where there are more women and where women have worked more directly, to influence a situation. I still think that the women in the, on the peace side, are from that perspective much more dominant. CS: And your activism, what do you put priorities, women, equal rights for women and society, or peace? NC: I, I, I’m not sure. I connected my peace action, my peace activity and even my women’s peace action, the purpose is to reach a viable and just peace, and therefore that is the objective, that is the, and I think women have something to contribute to the process, their perspectives have to be taken into account, and they have to participate, they have to be an integral part of the process, and their obviously, if the objective is to reach a just peace, then that’s what I deal with, OK, and I do it as a feminist, because I, I, of the reasons that I just mentioned. I, I’ve spent a good time of the last ten years or so working on women’s rights, and gender equality in Israel, but I also think that oftentimes, when you confuse your objectives, and you’re trying to fight for everything, and every framework, then you weaken the, the forcefulness of your activity, when we’re talking about women’s peace action, then the emphasis is on peace made by women, more women and men. In this excerpt, Chazan considers women who support the settler movement as a minority (lines 5–9) because it is a perspective which runs counter to their experience as women. Thus, Chazan considers peace to mean leaving the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and anyone who insists on living in those territories is against peace. This is consistent with Chazan’s perspective that peace could only be achieved through a two-state solution, because that is the only solution which will preserve Israel as a democracy with a Jewish majority.

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Note that none of the Palestinians I interviewed (whether in Nazareth or Jerusalem) mentioned any word about the settlers. They see settlers as part of a larger issue of Israel struggling with its identity as a state. In the next excerpt, Chazan defends her position to support the inclusion of Israeli women in the air force. Note that Chazan wants a Jewish majority in a democratic Israel within the borders of 1967. Excerpt #5 CS: I heard that you’re you’re supporting women to be in the air force is that in Israel? NC: Not, not, not just in the air force. I definitely supported. It wasn’t a question of supporting. It, it was being in the air force. Women are drafted into the army. They’re discriminated against, and I indeed submitted the legislation which equalized the position of women, and then in the army, and the first part of that, had to do with the air force, and then I think it’s a purely feminist action, and, and with the same breath, I am one of the, or was one of the biggest, doves in the Knesset, and I still am, I wanna reach the point, where we don’t need armies, but to allow for an equality, and systemic structural discrimination against women, is something I won’t accept in any way. When I asked Chazan about her priorities: peace activism or women’s rights, she responds that she connects both (lines 3–5, excerpt #3). But, she recognizes it is not easy, ‘I’m not sure’ (line 19, excerpt #4), and that ‘you confuse your objectives, and you’re trying to fight for everything’ (lines 29–30, excerpt #4). Chazan had expressed earlier that the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip causes Jewish women more suffering: I think that Israeli Jewish women have been occupied by the Occupation in the true sense of the word. And that we are [sic] almost have to use an internal, feminine intifada, in order to free ourselves from the Occupation. We Israeli Jews almost need to get rid of the Occupation in order to liberate ourselves, and women

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will be, I think, among the first to do that in the real sense of the word. (Chazan, in Mayer, 1994: 16) I asked her in an email whether her statement still holds true, and she replied in an email (September 10, 2004): I am even more convinced that the occupation must be ended if Israel is ever going to be free (not to speak of Israeli women), and if there is going to be any justice for Palestinians. My only problem is that time is beginning to run out, and I think it will be necessary to find much more innovative strategies to end the occupation. In other words, occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip must end. The mentality of militarism affects women negatively, and women will be better off when this ends. As I noted earlier, there is a stark contradiction between wanting peace and yet integrating women more in the military apparatus. Note that supporting women’s rights unconditionally may create contradictions in one’s perspective. For example, a Palestinian woman and peace activist from Haifa told me that she would not invite Limor Livnat (a right-wing female minister) to any meeting, because peace activism does not need women like Livnat. To Yael Dayan, a Knesset member in the 1990s, and a member of Gush Shalom, as well as deputy mayor of Tel Aviv at the time I interviewed her, women created advantageous conditions of activism out of a disadvantage; as they were excluded from the political decisionmaking, they sought other venues such as non-governmental movements like ‘ “Peace Now,” “Women in Black” and “Machsom Watch” ’ (excerpt #6, lines 9–10). She says that peace is not far away (line 19) because of all the efforts of the activists, and that even the name of the peace movement, which was given in the 1980s, expresses this temporality (lines 22–5). She said late in the interview that once peace is achieved, then Israeli society can concentrate on other issues, such as promoting women’s rights and other minority groups’ rights, perfecting the welfare, education and health systems.

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Excerpt #6 CS: In your peace activism, do you think you have an advantage because you’re a woman? YD: No. It’s an advantage which we have, we have created, but it’s out of a stress, not out of a good thing, because we are not into the system, because of such few women in parliament, in government, no women in the inner circles, negotiation groups, and so on. We have acquired a, and pushed ourselves into the movements, into the extra-parliamentary movements, and there, we’re leading* more women in Peace Now, in Women in Black, Machsom Watch, you know all this, a, a they’re led by women, not because someone offered it to us, because we were blocked from other places, so and women on the whole, not only they live longer, but are better educated, so you know, they’re more consistent, and I don’t say they have more time. They make the time. I know many of my friends, who have jobs in everything. They still go to a checkpoint twice a week, regularly, give it all the time it is necessary, and they get support of their families, and it is OK, the whole thing, We hope, I mean it’s been so many years, but we regard it as temporary. We don’t regard it as forever. This horrible situation, you see, so, it’s easier to run short distances, because even the movement is called now, Shalom Achshav [Peace Now]. This began in the ‘80s, you see, and we still call it Peace Now, because we feel that we should concentrate all the effort, and once the results are there, we’ll go our way. I will do the other things that are important. Dayan, in an interview for a magazine in 2002, expressed the contradiction between the settler movement and human rights, which include women’s rights, as follows: One cannot believe in the concept of ‘Greater Israel’ and be a feminist at the same time. You cannot have a double standard when it comes to basic human rights. A Jewish Israeli women should be equal to an Arab Israeli woman should be equal to a Palestinian Arab woman. (Dayan, 2002)

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She does not name the settler movement, but the movement itself is embedded in any discourse which concerns the belief in or hope for a greater Israel. Such belief denies that Palestinian people have a right to live on the land. Consistent with her view of a two-state solution, she singles out ‘Arab Israeli’ as a category of a minority group living within the boundaries of the 1948 ceasefire borders of Israel. Note here that I am following an order of presenting all Jewish activists one after the other in this chapter, as the issue of feminism/ nationalism seems to follow an internal dialogue within the Jewish community. In the next excerpt, I analyze Gila Svirsky’s perspective on the question of nationalism/feminism. Svirsky, a co-founder of Women in Black and other organizations, does not think women are at any advantage when working for peace, however, they are better mediators and conciliators (lines 3–10). Excerpt #7 CS: Do you think you have an advantage as a woman doing this type of work? GS: I don’t think, I don’t think women have an advantage. I do think though, that women have more motivation to end the occupation. I also think that women are experienced mediators, as mothers, as people who grew up always on the losing end of the equality equation, we come with certain tools, that men have never had to worry about, and so I think that our experience has given us better tools to work toward reconciliation than the experience of men. CS: I want to digress really because there are some women who are more nationalistic than men. GS: This is a very big problem. It’s a very big problem. Certainly in Israeli society, I have no problem saying that, nationalism is very troubling, very problematic, inside Israel. In Palestinian society the context is completely different. I do not forgive violence. I do not forgive rabid nationalism, extremism. I think those are wrong under any circumstances, but the kind of thoughtful

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nationalism that seeks liberation, is I think, a legitimate expression of one’s identity, and therefore is not in conflict with one’s desire for feminism, and, and egalitarian society, so it’s tricky and it’s subtle, and it’s much more sophisticated than the simple, than the simplistic statement that says feminism and nationalism are not compatible. It’s much more complex than that. The perspective on women as more successful in mediating is a perspective which I find prevalent among American feminists (see Myer, 2008, as an example). In relation to the above, I asked Svirsky to explain how some women are more nationalistic than men (lines 11–12). She responded by drawing a distinction between the Palestinian and the Israeli women’s nationalism (lines 13–24). The Palestinian women are part of a national movement towards liberation and self-determination. Israeli women’s nationalism, on the other hand, is ‘rabid’ (line 17), as it does not seek liberation. In the next excerpt, Svirsky discusses how women in the settler movement are unenlightened about their situation and how this is a symptom of a society gone wrong as a story she saw on the news shows. The story is about how a school in Jerusalem takes pride because students who graduate from it enter the air force. Excerpt #8 CS: What, what do you think of the women on the Jewish side, who are very, you know, right-winged and, with continuing the occupation, and GS: I think these women need enlightenment. They’ve been part of a very masculine culture that talks about, living in fear of the Arabs, and they come out of it with a very sick form of rabid nationalism that is harmful to everybody, to Arabs and also to ourselves. We live in a very sick, sick society in Israel. Lemme tell you, I saw something on TV last night, and I’ve been looking for someone to, to, to say: ‘Wasn’t this terrible?’ [Laughter] CS: Yes. [Laughter] GS: And, because on TV, it was made to look very nice. What it was is there was a ceremony for the air force, where three boys

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graduated from the very same high school, and they just were, passed the course for being an air force pilot. Now being an air force pilot is considered a very big deal in Israel. Only the very best are considered the ones who go to air force. I, of course have a problem with that statement alone. I think the best go to be pacifist. I think the best go to be conscientious objectors. Nevertheless, even if we assume that it’s true, that you have to serve in the army, and it’s hard to become a pilot, OK, but what do they do? They went to the high school, and they asked the principal: ‘How is it possible that from one little school in all of Israel, there are three boys who graduate this course isn’t that amazing?’ And he was all smiles, and he said, ‘Yes, because we raise our boys for excellence,’ and you look around, and you, and can see, we’re so proud all the time, we are instilling in our children that they must be excellent. They must go to the army. They must do their, this. They must be in combat. They must be in the air force. I wanted to puke. It was horrible to me to hear it. As principal of the school, he’s meant to be an educator. He’s meant to instill values of humanitarianism. Let him instill, motivate his children to become doctors, to become accountants, to become bakers, not to become savage fighters. The best thing about the air force is you can kill people without knowing that they died. It’s the most grotesque form of, of, of immorality, if you kill someone when you’re facing that person. At least you go home at night, and you’re shocked, and you think about, was it right or wrong? If you’re an air force pilot, you kill someone with impunity. You go home and make love with your wife. I cannot bear this. I cannot bear this, and this is the quintessential example of the militarism of our society. Thanks for letting me get it all out. [Laughter] CS: [Laughter] In agreement with Svirsky, I asked the next question, which is more pointed and calls nationalistic Israeli women ‘right-winged’ (lines 1–3), a question similar to the one I asked Chazan. Svirsky’s response was that these women are unenlightened and have been exposed to the masculine

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militaristic discourse in Israel. In other words, they have adopted the dominant masculine perspective (lines 4–8). It is a type of rabid nationalism which is built on the fear of the Arabs (lines 5–6). At that point, Svirsky tells me about a news story which made her feel very bad. It is about a school in Jerusalem which was praised in the news for educating so many students who manage to become part of the elite military unit of the air force (lines 12–42). This perspective of glory on the military makes her feel bad, as she thinks it is making her society sick (line 8). In excerpt #9, Uri Avnery, the 82-year-old symbolic leader of Gush Shalom, admits that he never even thought of questioning he is in an advantageous position doing what he’s doing as a male (lines 7–10), as he does not think it makes a difference (lines 7–8). But not making a difference is hedged by his ‘a woman with a strong character, could do the same’ (line 20), ‘a woman is * strong-willed, can do the same’ (lines 20–1). He also thinks that on second thoughts, men are in an advantageous position to do activism (lines 12–13). Excerpt #9 CS: Do you think you have an advantage as a man compared to women who work for pushing peace? UA: Advantage? On whom over whom? CS: As a man? UA: You mean advantage over a woman? CS: Over a woman, in your peace activism. UA: I never really thought about that. In principle, I don’t think so, because a woman with a strong character, could do the same, if maybe better, but on second thought, perhaps it would be for a woman more difficult. CS: Why? UA: Because the situation of our society, being what it is. I mean in the Israeli Hebrew, Israeli society, it is still easier for a man, I think to achieve anything, than for a woman, but this is, I think very difficult to define, and to measure, perhaps, perhaps. CS: It’s related, I don’t know, you know, do you, can you do or say things that women can’t?

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UA: No. CS: No? UA: I don’t think so I think a woman is* strong willed, can do the same. In other words, Avnery’s perspective is masculine in that it assumes that only women with a strong will can do what men (the more dominant group) do. Note that Avnery also told me during the interview that his journal Ha’olam Hazai, which promoted peace and understanding between the two peoples (it had an Arabic version too) always had a picture of a beautiful woman on its cover to enhance its sales. In other words, Avnery’s generation saw politics as a vocation for men (the cover picture may establish it as a men’s magazine), but also he had a good insight with regard to the chauvinism of both societies. In the next excerpt, Ilan Pappé, the Israeli historian, being of a younger generation than Avnery, does not hesitate to tell me that he thinks it is more advantageous for women to be involved in peace activism. Excerpt #10 CS: Now as being male [laughter], being a male, do you think you have an, advantage in your activism, in making your voice heard et cetera? IP: No. Don’t think so. In fact, I think I have a disadvantage. What, what I started to learn very recently, is that actually feminists’ for instance, perspective, is the only genuine perspective which is anti-nationalistic for instance, nationalism and chauvinism, male chauvinism can go together very strongly, and, I think most men find it very difficult to give up, not just their own national ethos and myths, but nationalism in general. It goes together with, with, the position of men in society, and for instance, I think pure pacifism can really come more, more readily to a woman’s point of view. So on an ontological philosophical level, I would say this is definitely not an advantage. On the more practical level, yes I think so, for instance I’ll give you one example: the Arab society in part is very, very patriarchal and,

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it’s easier for me as a man to start dialogue than for a woman to do this. There is a need, I feel there is a need to, to reach to the rural areas, to the countryside, and again sometimes, it’s easier for a man in such a society, but, but, so there is, the bottom line is, I don’t think there is a difference because the advantages, I mean* as I tried to show, there are advantages, and the disadvantages, but, I would like what, I would like to see, and I haven’t seen yet in Israel, a feminism which is more closely associated to pacifism. I mean, we have here, very funny phenomenon such as a very active feminist group that their main goal, and achievement is to allow women to be pilots in the Israeli air force, so that they can bomb also Palestinian [laughter]. So I find this very weird, and, but, I think once we will have a more genuine feminism that is sort of connected to, to pacifism and, this could be a very, effective tool, opposing the occupation, like Machsom Watch, and, and, and, and if you think about the Lebanon war, and the movement that started the pressure from below, on the Israelis to withdraw from southern Lebanon, it was the four mothers movement, so there is an element that can be advantageous, for advancing peace and, peaceful objectives, but it’s not, has not yet materialized in the local country. Pappé makes a distinction between two levels of approaching my question: ontological and practical. At the ontological level women are more pacifists and less nationalists because nationalism and male chauvinism go together (lines 4–8). Women’s perspective is more pacifist (line 12). This is in accord with the observation some feminist scholars make (see for example Moghadam, 1994). But, on the other hand, at a practical level, it is easier for a male to be active in the public space (line 17), particularly when he has to reach out to the other side (the Palestinian) for dialogue. It is easier for him as male to meet other males (particularly in rural areas) because of the strong patriarchy in Palestinian society (lines 16–21). Pappé is puzzled by the contradictions of the Israeli feminist movement. On the one hand, its actions run counter to pacifism, such as promoting women pilots in the air force, which will lead to more

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militarism and more violence, and once Israeli feminism connects itself more to pacifism it will have a better impact (lines 23–8). But there are signs of a better direction, such as the Machsom Watch women and the earlier women’s movement to end the Israeli military presence in southern Lebanon (lines 30–4). Pappé singles out Naomi Chazan (mentioned earlier) as an advocate for such a contradictory position (lines 5–14, in the next excerpt). Excerpt #11 CS: Yes, yes well, we connect women with pacifism, but in my mind now, as you are talking you know, images of [laughter], very nationalistic women through my head. IP: Oh very, very, yeah both sides, on both sides. It’s incredible. It’s incredible. I had this long conversation with Naomi Chazan. I said, ‘How can you call yourself a feminist, if all your struggle is to allow women to, to bomb Palestinian houses, from the air,’ because she struggles for allowing women into the Israeli air force in the, elite units. I said, ‘What is? What are these elite units in, in air force, for* they are part of the, mechanism of of..’ CS: Masculinity. IP: Yeah, masculinity which is used to occupy, and oppress another people. In the next excerpt, Nabila Espanioly, the Palestinian activist from Nazareth who runs a childhood educational center, makes a distinction between three forms of discrimination which affect her because of her identity (lines 4–14): ‘I am part of the Palestinian people’ (line 8), ‘I am part of women in Israel’ (line 7) and ‘I am part of the Palestinian women inside Israel’ (lines 8–9). Excerpt #12 CS: OK, in your activism, political activism and activism for more equality for women, do you think you have an advantage over men, because you are a woman?

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NE: I, in my, in my awareness, in my activism, I think there is no difference between men and women in that concern, in that the difference is their lives, and their experiences and what they shape, and in that, yes I am different, because I lived in a different form of discrimination: I’m part of the Palestinian people, I’m part of women in Israel, I’m part of the Palestinian women inside Israel, so these three forms of discrimination that had shaped me, where the Palestinian men, maybe they have to just, they were, they have other privileges, and other discriminates, because there are also other demands on, on, not equal demands on men and women in society, but they are in a society which is patriarchal, which is conservative, in a society which has conflict and lived in conflict, so in that concern, maybe. I don’t think that I’m privileged. I think that everyone could be privileged in his awareness, so I’m privileged in the awareness. Yes, I’m privileged, because I see the, the privileges, and dis-privileges at the same time. I hate to see it also, as an obstacle because in fact, the fact that as women, we see things moralistically, and this is a privilege, and, but this makes our life more difficult, because as a person, as an individual as a woman, I want a lot. I want to achieve a lot. I’m, I’m not satisfied in working on only one issue, or in one small piece. I want to relate everything that I do with a vision, with a peace, with a feminism, with whatever the no sexism in that, I wish to live in. So, that I’m privileged, but also I’m, I’m, it is a huge responsibility when you see the complexity of the issues, it’s like on our shoulder, and it’s sometimes difficult to see the small steps that you get, so that’s I think it’s a challenge. It’s the biggest challenge, for me always to say, to work on the specific issues, and to work on the small steps, but never to forget the vision, and to always relate what you were with the vision, and this is the biggest challenge, to see all the steps that you’re doing, the things that you’re doing and related to that vision, and connect it to that vision so, this is, yeah, if that’s a privilege, I don’t know it’s a challenge. Espanioly considers the three forms of discrimination which she experiences as advantageous to her, as they bring out more personal awareness

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(lines 17–18), in other words, there are disadvantages and at the same time advantages with regard to her identity position, the disadvantages bringing about the advantages (lines 18–19). She is aware that being a woman helps her with her moral perspective with regards to issues of discrimination (lines 20–1). She remarks that because of her perspective, she tries in her activism, while working on focused singular small issues, never to forget the larger picture (lines 14–27). I wanted her to elaborate further on her three forms of discrimination, so I asked her whether she prioritizes her activism (lines 1–2 in excerpt #13). Excerpt #13 CS: Do you have in your work priorities, with regard to the national struggle, or the feminist struggle? NE: No ... I think this is sort of question that it is, it’s easy when you write, you write points because people have to understand you, but when you are thinking holistic form, you, it’s very complicated, and you can’t just relate it, and I think that my identity is, is a puzzle of different identities. It’s a puzzle of different processes, that I have, so if my national identity, if you think about my national identity, if you think about my feminist identity, if you think about my professional identity, if you think about my leadership identity, if you think about like my, my sister identity, or my friendship identity, or how I deal with my friends, how I deal with my sisters, how I deal with my family. All of these things are a part of me, and it seems outside, or if they should sometimes contradict, like the national identity with the feminist identity, I don’t see it contradicting. I see it, that it is a, it’s, the struggle is more a spiral. I don’t see this development as linear carrying it out, yes, let’s discuss the nationalist issues, and then we will come to the feminist issues, and the theorists were trying ... to get back to that direction. I think ... we have to stop thinking that direction, and most of the families, Palestinian families will tell you that it is related. I can’t wait until the occupation, end of the occupation, to speak about violence against

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women. Right now in West Bank and Gaza, the there is the, I thought I heard that the minister of women affairs up there, in West Bank which is Dr. Miryam Fadlallah and, she said there is no violence except the violence of the occupation which means that. Espanioly admits that this is not an easy question (lines 4–5, excerpt #13). In order to answer the question, she explains her perspective on identity, as she sees that as the driving force for her particular understanding of her work. Her metaphor for identity is that of a puzzle (lines 6–7), all the pieces building up towards a holistic identity of a person: ‘my national identity’ (line 8), ‘my professional identity’ (line 10), ‘my leadership identity’ (lines 10–11), ‘my, my sister identity’ (lines 11–12) ‘or my friendship identity’ (line 12). She sees all these identities in a struggle that is spiral not linear (line 17), that her national and her feminist identity don’t contradict each other (line 16). In other words, national and feminist go together (lines 16–19), contrary to what feminist theorists already say (lines 19–20). Espanioly criticizes Palestinians, including the Minister of Women’s Affairs Miryam Fadlallah, who say that there is one form of violence, the national. She thinks that both domestic violence against women and the national struggle should go together, without prioritization (lines 26–8). In the next excerpt, Espanioly continues to talk about whether the struggle for women’s rights can be separated from the struggle for national rights. Excerpt #14 NE: So, yes I think that, the Palestinian women movement, as a feminist movement had already passed this stage of saying we have stages. There’s no stages. There is priorities of development, and we have to work on all the different issues. Now, priorities, sometimes I, when I have two issues to attend, my priorities, is not according to what’s my priorities now, feminist or national. My priorities, the different elements, my psychological feeling today for example, if someone invites me today

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for a demonstration against what is happening in Gaza, I will just go, even if I have other things, which are feminist issues, and I could wait, so it’s, it’s a meeting. I have to say I postpone it, so it depends on my psychological needs. Hearing today the news in the television, and now they entered Gaza, and how they bombed Gaza, and so I’m furious all day. I’m thinking we have to do something, so this will be something that I will join immediately. If I were in the same time, people were telling me a women was killed, because of whatever legitimation, ’cause she is a woman and what they call their legitimation, or other legitimation, in the same time, I would be in a situation where I was more furious here. I’m furious and I have to decide. I’ll try to say OK let’s do it both, and I’m, I’m also affecting timing, so I can’t affect the time of the demonstration, so I go to both, or decide which where I’m more furious today, but tomorrow the furiousness could be different. CS: [Laughter.] NE: [Laughter.] So if my anger, which I try to translate into, into action, if my anger is one of the elements to decide. It’s what my psychological impact, but awareness, from awareness I think that everything is important, and I will decide on my energies, or I will try to convince others to go there, and I go here, so I don’t see, contradiction. I don’t see priorities needed in that the, the, the practical priorities are influenced by different awareness, but only the, my awareness. As a Palestinian woman, Espanioly’s prioritization is practical, rather than ideological. It is about what the pressing issue is at any moment (lines 1–24). If there is a demonstration in support of Gaza, and at the same time, a woman is killed for one reason or another, she will publicly advocate and attend to both issues. Therefore, she will not prioritize, in principle, because it is about a perspective which sees the whole and not just pieces when it comes to issues of discrimination (lines 26–33). In the next excerpt, Samira Khouri, the veteran activist from Nazareth, indicated that she has to work hard as a woman activist

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in order to bring attention to pressing issues. She thinks that today there are more and more women activists, but when she started, there were very few women working with her (lines 3–12). She explains that when she and other activists organized a demonstration on Women’s Day, March 8, people were at first skeptical as they did not know the meaning of that day (lines 15–18). She and others had to advocate for Women’s Day in the Knesset, the Histadrut and Naamat (the women’s branch of the Histadrut) in order to institutionalize that day in Israel. Now everyone knows about it. Today she sees men bringing flowers to women on this day (lines 29–30), a custom she and other activists encouraged in Nazareth, by standing at intersections and distributing flowers to women on Women’s Day (lines 32–3). Activists used to give flowers to men too, asking them to distribute them to women in their family (line 27), and thus, the day became established. Excerpt #15 CS: Do you think you have an advantage in your work because you are a woman? SK: I think yes, because I believe that, as a woman of course I struggled, and I had to work as a woman, and I find many troubles in my life and obstacles. CS: Obstacles? SK: Obstacles. You see, I forgot my language. I’m very sorry I don’t speak much English, but I must continue, many obstacles in my way as a woman, but we continued and now, I see that there are so many women that they are struggling the same like me. I see that there are many women are struggling in the peace movement, struggling for their work. They are demanding work. They are demanding for the right of work, the right for payment, their salaries, the right of life, many women. I can say that in our demonstrations when we, we always hold demonstration on the 8th of March. This is the International Women’s Day, at the beginning we start with some women. You can count them on your fingers, but now we have thousands of women who believe in this day, and that their rights as women, and at

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the beginning we used to work alone. Our movement alone, and only our movement and now because we insisted on this day, and distributing the idea to schools, to the Knesset, the Histadrut, Na’amat, to all the organizations. Now we don’t need to say this is the International Women’s Day. Now everybody is celebrating, even in the Knesset, the Histadrut. They used to say this is not our day. This is a communist day, and we used to tell them it’s not a communist day ... It began in the United States and workers started, women workers started this day, so you are not workers? You must continue, you must so now ... even we see that men are taking flowers for their wives, for their daughters, for distributing flowers, even the young people here in Nazareth, on the day of the International Women’s Day they, stop in the entrances of the city, and they distribute flowers for women who are working, who are going to work, and even sometimes they give men, they tell them give it to your mother, give it to your wife, so I can say that there’s a great advantage of being a woman struggling for the rights of women, and for the life of women, to be good and to be at safety ... In other words, Khouri chose to answer my question by focusing on her activities promoting women’s rights in Israel. She did not address the national rights for the Palestinians, in my question about priorities. In the next excerpt, Mohammad Zaidan who runs the Arab Human Rights Center in Nazareth does not think that being male puts him in any particular position with regard to his activism. Excerpt #16 CS: In your activism, do you think you have an advantage as a man over women who are active? MZ: No. I feel that’s not so. In human rights struggle, ya’ni, you are in an international meeting, you are meeting and meeting, you will find more women than men in the field. I think in, for some women, it, it’s a problem but also, for some men it’s problem, for especially, to travel a lot, to be in different places, in very

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short time, but it’s an, in general, I don’t think it’s a problem, or it’s an issue. Zaidan, though, recognizes that when he goes to international conferences, he meets more women activists on human rights than men. He does not explain why that is the case, and regrettably in retrospect, I didn’t ask him. In the next excerpt, Zahira Kamal, the former minister for women’s affairs in the Palestinian authority, recognizes that women have a different perspective than men (line 8). For example, the word ‘security’ has a military meaning when used by men, but a human dimension when used by a woman (lines 9–19). Excerpt #17 CS: Do you think you have an advantage as a woman, that you can be more effective than a man? ZK: It is, probably, I cannot say no, yes, you know. Ya’ni, in politics, politics is the era of man, and we are as women trying to make the common, and so, and to break the laws that have been put by men, in getting, they think that we have to follow the rules of the game, and we are breaking the rules of the game, you know we are going, because also, we have different perspectives on that [pause], and different ways of interpretation of the politics. As an example, ya’ni, when men are talking about security, they are talking about weapons, tanks number of policemen, borders, checkpoints, you know abraj al-muraqabeh [observation towers in Arabic]. CS: Security towers. ZK: Yeah, and for us, as woman we are talking about the human security, about following, ya’ni, or endorsing, and implementing the human security, law. Security means for us access of education, access for health, shelter, or housing. It means freedom of movement, so we are using different, ya’ni, we are dealing with it from a human being issues. To Kamal, women, through their activism, are trying to break the rules set by men (lines 3–7). Therefore, it is harder for a woman to

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be active in public life than it is for a man. But, in addition, men understand political situations militaristically, and women understand them in a humanistic manner. But at the same time Kamal confesses ‘we do not have a feminist movement ... the women’s movement is the national movement’ (Rubenberg, 2001: 223). In the next excerpt, Mahdi Abd Al-Hadi, the Palestinian from Jerusalem who runs a research center, explains that being male does and does not put him at an advantage in his activism, at the same time, as it depends on other aspects of the identity of the activist in his own Palestinian society. Unlike Pappé – who understood the question as how difficult or easy it becomes to reach out to the other national side, and therefore being a Jewish male, it is easier for Pappé to reach out to the Palestinian side, as it is more rigidly patriarchal than other societies, such as the Jewish side – Abd Al-Hadi understands the question as whether it is difficult or easy for him being male, working in the public eye in his own society (lines 3–12). Excerpt #18 CS: My last question, do you think being a man gives you an advantage in your work? MAH: Yes and no. Yes and no. It depends on many things: first of all the family. If you have well established, because this is the culture of the Arab world. In the Middle East, and particularly Palestine, you have family to back you, and to provide you with all the necessaries, whether you are a he or a she, too it’s your motivation, your career, obsession with* your relationship, you’re open and you are sure. I think women in Palestine, in the Arab world, went through very hard times, of being misunderstood, or misused, or at the same time labeled with things they have never been with it, were not looked at, similar to men’s activities, or men’s work. Their morals have been looked at, as if they are different, and this is from day one, from the first point, which is, I went to sit in, with my own two daughters, you know I provided them with the best education, best universities, beautiful healthy environment, at home, everything is accessible, and

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no taboos, sharing everything that come to your mind, even when they were too young, in Schmidt school. I took them and brought them books, from best libraries. They were, I think still 6, 5, where do I come from ... even I went to school, to ask the teacher not to teach them religion, because I don’t want them to be prisoner to one faith. They have to be free and then, they decide whether they are good Muslim or bad Muslim, because she was teaching them all the time about the fear, about the death, and fear of God. Of course, being a man makes a big difference in the Arab Islamic world, for a long term, of course, of course, this advantage is, for women, and they have to fight double. Here, Abd Al-Hadi admits that women went through a more difficult time trying to work in public on the Palestinian side, being part of a larger Arab and Middle Eastern whole (lines 4–5). But, as a person, he is raising his daughters no differently than if they were sons, giving them the best education (lines 17–20). He also engages in conversations with his daughters about various topics, even religion, where he is allowing them to think about their own religion and decide their faith (lines 21–4). Abd Al-Hadi knows that women have to fight twice as hard as men have to (lines 28–9). In the next excerpt, Abd Al-Hadi likens the burden of women to that of being born to a Palestinian notable family, like himself. Excerpt #19 MAH: Exactly something similar, but not in the same power, if you come from a notable big family in Palestine, you have to prove yourself. You cannot live on the assets, or the heritage, or the achievement of the others. I remember in the early days of the first intifada, I was driving with Faisal Husseini in Bethany, and we were short of gasoline, and we stopped to have some petrol, and the man came to us, and look at me, and said, ‘Mahdi, Faisal.’ I said, ‘Yes,’ [he] said, ‘Listen guys, I like you, I respect you, I understand exactly what you are doing, and you are our

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heroes, but if you tell me you are Husseini, and Abd Al-Hadi I will hate you,’ and he used very bad words, you know, screw you like this, ‘Screw you. I don’t see you Abd Al-Hadi. I don’t see you Husseini.’ The same thing applies on Sari Nusseibi. He’s a philosopher. He’s a thinker, and he’s an activist, but he has to do a lot of work to maintain his status, or to maintain his status. The same applies in a different power to women, because they are women, they have to do it more and more, and to stress it more and more, in order just to maintain the minimum standard of being there. First, they cannot be there automatically. They have to fight to be there. They have to struggle to be there. Men are already there, but in different layers, and different level, but if you come from a notable wealthy strong family, or you have, and you want to stay their equal with others, and maybe leading the others, you have to do more work. You have to invest more time and effort in working. You are not accepted because you coming from there from this notable this ... Abd Al-Hadi emphasizes the privileges of coming from a notable Palestinian family, as he denies such privileges at the same time, his being a family originally from the Nablus region. He tells me a story which locates him in a social space along with Faisal Husseini, a Jerusalem activist from an old feudal family (line 5). Abd Al-Hadi tells me that while he was driving once in Bethany (near Jerusalem) along with Husseini (line 5), during the first intifada, a guy at a gasoline station tells both of them that he respects them for their actions, not their family names. What the unidentified guy tells Abd Al-Hadi is reported to me in constructed dialogue (lines 5–9), and that the same applies to Sari Nusseibi (another activist from a notable family from Jerusalem). Abd Al-Hadi continues the story in the next excerpt. Excerpt #20 MAH: ... and this is because of the revolution of 1964, of the PLO, and this is because of the massive of Palestinian refugees, and this is because of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, and this

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is because of the shortcomings from the historical leaders of the Palestinian national movement. This is because of the misreading of the history today. Jerusalem and Ramallah and Nablus and Jenin, you are not accepted, he or she just because your father was somebody, or you come from a different family. No, you are accepted, recognized and maybe build up that relationship because of what you are doing, not because you have what it, who are my brothers. They don’t know that. They know me, who was my father, my uncles, yes, they know them, because Ouni Abd Al-Hadi is a founding member of Istiqlal [independence] party, Fu’ad Abd Al-Hadi, judge notable, in Jerusalem Islamic Higher Committee, but in the early days, you are not as the son of, then coming from the family of, but later on, you as a person, Mahdi, then you achieve something, doctor. They call you doctor. They give you this title. They give you this star. They know you from the start, so you build up from it, then you become noticed. To say I’m not a doctor. I’m Abd Al-Hadi. I’m just Mahdi, and they say this modesty is more powerful in making your identity, more recognized and more accepted. The resolution of the story is to let me know that he has to work hard to prove himself, because the family name by itself does not make people respect him. He has to do something. And he did prove himself and earn the respect of people, as he is ‘not doctor Abd Al-Hadi’ (line 20), ‘just Mahdi’ (line 21). In other words, he established an identity through his work, independent of his family’s historic legacy. This is revealing of a perspective that maybe, at some point in the past, the family name was sufficient in order for people to respect him, but not any more. It is because the social order has changed. He attributes change in the social order not to the Nakba, but rather to the formation of the PLO in 1964 (line 1, excerpt #20), as it witnessed the rise of people from lower classes into political activism. In the past, activists were from notable families only (he mentions two members of his own family; lines 13–14, excerpt #20), but now he has to show more than just his family name. The other purpose of the story is to let me know, as his interlocutor, that he is from a notable

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family. Note here that the Palestinian struggle for self-determination knew class conflicts from its early beginnings, and it is not true that in the past only certain families participated in the struggle (see Chapter 2, ‘A Note on the Question of Palestine’). Abd Al-Hadi, in addition, attributes the breaking down of the status of old families to the ‘Palestinian–Israeli conflict’ (line 3, excerpt #20), the refugee status of many Palestinians (line 1, excerpt #20), and ‘shortcomings of the historical leaders’ (line 4, excerpt #20). Moreover, the story Abd Al-Hadi is providing is not merely a ‘recapitulation of past experience,’ as Labov and Waletzky (1997 [1967]: 371) suggest. Rather, it is locating self in the social space among Palestinians in the past, and at present. In the past, it was his family name that was the important self-indicator, in the present, it is how he serves the Palestinian cause. Lastly, Abd Al-Hadi tells me (lines 15–17, excerpt #20) that he has to work hard to prove himself, and that women had to work even harder (lines 28–9, excerpt #18) because of their position in society. It is to be noted that while it might be advantageous/disadvantageous for a male to be from a notable family, Abd Al-Hadi does not express a similar view when it comes to women. A woman is a woman, but a male from a notable family is a male from a notable family. In other words, Abd Al-Hadi ’s perspective is that women are all alike, whereas men can be distinguished by old status, and by their deeds. It is a perspective which is deeply engaged in a vision of male dominance. By denying it, he is actually confirming his perspective. Amneh Badran, the Palestinian activist from Jerusalem who was the director of the Jerusalem Center when I met her, in the next excerpt, maintains that being a woman puts her at once at an advantage and a disadvantage. Excerpt # 21 CS: Do you think you have an advantage as a woman in the type of work you are doing? AB: It, it, it’s a role that we have to play [telephone goes off] and, advantage is that, sometimes you can do more than men,

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[telephone again] because you are not taken seriously unfortunately, but, excuse, excuse me, I think ... In Badran’s perspective, it is easier for women to work, because they don’t attract attention and they can work quietly, but at the same time, because they are not taken seriously, their work may not be valued as much as men’s work. In addition, in an email exchange, Badran expressed to me that women bring new values in their activism, in other words, it might be advantageous for women to do this type of activism, as they bring values of respect and human security (remember Mohammad Zaidan in this respect). Also in an email to me (August 12, 2004), Badran expressed the following: I can’t afford losing hope that there must be a change and I have to contribute to making this change in a way I and others see could elevate some of the injustices Palestinians lived/ are still living. Women could bring a new way of thinking to conflict resolutions. We bring values and principles e.g. respect for human rights, international law, human security and equality.

Conclusion I would like to conclude with two sharp commentaries on what comes first: liberation as a woman or liberation as a nation. The first, from the memoir of Raymonda Tawil (1979: 197–8), a long-time activist and journalist, is somewhat humorous; nonetheless it conveys poignancy in its apparent humor. I was faced with a severe dilemma. Personal freedom is one of my revolutionary ideals. Aside from the political aims of the tour, I looked forward to the idea of traveling freely, alone and unrestricted ... my problem was not merely personal: In order to serve my people, I had to retain the respect of my social environment. In deciding on which front to fight, I had to give priority to the struggle for national freedom over my struggle for emancipation

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as a woman. Reluctantly, I gave up my dreams of a short vacation in liberty. Very well, I said, let Da’ud (her husband) come with me. On her first appearance as a political advocate for the Palestinian people in the US, she had to make a choice between asking her husband to go with her, or to go by herself. She opted for the latter. The second is from Fadwa Tuqan’s memoir. Tuqan relates how she wasn’t able to write political poetry upon her father’s request. Rather, she wrote poetry describing her inner feelings: A voice from within would rise up in silent protest: How and with what right or logic does father ask me to compose political poetry, when I am shut up inside these walls? I don’t sit with the men, I don’t listen to their heated discussions, nor do I participate in the turmoil of life on the outside. I’m still not even acquainted with the face of my own country as I was not allowed to travel ... Father was demanding that I write on a subject totally removed from my interests and having no connection with the psychological struggle going on inside me. Feelings of incompetence so inundated me that, when I went to bed, I would give myself over to weeping. (Tuqan, in Jayyusi, 1992: 712) Only after her father’s death, which coincided with the Nakba, did she become known for her political nationalistic poetry, further: when the roof fell in on Palestine in 1948, the veil fell off the Nablus woman’s face. She had struggled for a long time to free herself from the traditional wrap and the thick black veil. (Tuqan, in Jayyusi, 1992: 716) The above-mentioned examples can be supportive of the argument that women often give more attention to the gendered nature of public work, as I did not find equivalent examples in any men’s writings. Most activists (whether men or women) recognize that activism has a gendered aspect to it. But it may be the case that for women

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the question of feminism/nationalism is more acute, as Avnery claims that he did not think of the question before, although, as indicated by Pappé, Israeli men who work towards peace have to justify what they are doing, as they are expected to support nationalism. Or at a more factual level, Zaidan finds more women actively advocating peace, as often happens when he meets other activists. Lastly, it seems that within the Jewish community of activists there is a debate on the visibility of women in different institutions: Chazan is calling for women to be in the air force, Pappé finds that contradictory to feminist activism and Svirsky is against the celebration of militarism in general for both sexes.

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9 TOWAR DS A BR IGHTER FUTUR E

This chapter discusses the interviewees’ vision of a better future. All seem optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. The shared perspective is that the conflict is not intractable, and they all seem to offer practical solutions on what needs to be done. The majority on both sides stressed the legal issue of respecting UN resolutions, as well as the ethical issues which underlie the legalities. All agree that human dignity should be a concern in resolving the conflict. Recognition of the other side’s humanity goes without saying with all of the interviewees. They all stress that both peoples’ humanity is equal. In contrast to my interviewees’ general humanistic concern, I will discuss here the position of Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor on a recent visit to Israel. In March 2008, Merkel paid a historic visit to Israel and addressed the Knesset, in German and in Hebrew (in a land where primarily Arabic was spoken only 60 years ago). The Arab press in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza did not take an interest in the event and it is obvious why. This visit was seen as a European issue and not as a Middle Eastern issue. A debt had to be paid to the Jewish people, symbolically this time, for an evil planned and executed on European soil by a European perpetrator. As a head of state, Merkel needed to show a long-awaited remorse, and apologize for the crimes of the Holocaust in the name of her country. Conspicuously absent from Merkel’s speech in the Knesset was any mention of the

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Palestinian people, humanitarian and otherwise (as a Gush Shalom advertisement from March 20, 2008 indicates). Merkel may not have thought about this, or she may have not deemed it compatible with her gesture of remorse and goodwill towards the Jewish people. But it is necessary, for a full closure of the circle of evil, to recognize the role Israel played as a state in the displacement, suffering and misery of the Palestinian people. The question to be asked here is: why was the Palestinian missing from Merkel’s talk? Or rather, was he/she missing from Merkel’s talk? To answer these questions, I am aided by one of Joseph Massad’s finest essays, ‘Palestinians and the limits of racialized discourse’ (2006). To adopt Massad’s perspective is to say that Merkel did not mention the Palestinian because he or she does not exist for her discursively and meta-discursively to begin with. To follow Massad: because putting the two stories together – as many peace activists already do on both sides of the equation (Uri Avnery being one of the most clear on this point) – would imply that Merkel would have to re-evaluate her categories of what makes a Jew, and by implication, what makes her a German or a European. Combining both stories will open a discursive space, according to Massad, in which the Jew is a colonialist and a refugee at the same time, akin to other Europeans in settlement contexts. In other words, to see both sides of the coin is to admit that the Jew is not merely a refugee escaping persecution in Europe and building a home somewhere else, but also part of a white colonial project. If that happens, Merkel’s sympathy for the Jew (which she is willing to give in abundance) will be disturbed, as the Jew is no longer only a victim, but rather a full partner in a Western civilizational colonial project. In that, the Jew in Europe will acquire, symbolically and discursively, full racial membership as a white European. Therefore Merkel will have to look at the Jew, and the Jew in return, will have to look at her ‘begovah ha’einayim’ (‘at the height of their eyes,’ the Hebrew phrase for being equal in every respect). The Jew will cease to be ‘not quite white’ or ‘an honorary white’ – in Massad’s terms – and become fully white. The next question which follows is: where does that leave the Palestinian? According to Massad, the Madrid talks and the aftermath of Oslo allowed the Palestinians to become ‘honorary Jews.’

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That means sympathy for the Palestinians was given in the Western media. In the USA, more and more Palestinians were interviewed on television. These Palestinians spoke English fluently and smoothly, abandoning the Arabic rhetorical styles and adjusting more to an English-speaking ear. The Palestinian press, as well as Palestinian politicians, took that as a good sign: ‘We are finally being heard.’ But this had its limitations, according to Massad. Palestinians were being heard as long as they played the role of the victim. Any straying from that role and any indication of an independent will was not discursively allowed. Palestinians were given sympathy, but not partnership ‘begovah ha’einayim.’ Hamas continued through the 1990s to reject the newly acquired political rhetoric and tactics and therefore was first ignored and then later, discredited. But Hamas’s rhetoric (as well as actions), according to Massad, does not depart from the old rhetoric of the PLO and any mainstream Palestinian rhetoric of the decades which preceded Oslo. In conclusion, the refusal to put both stories together is a statement about European (and US) racial profiling more than anything else. To go back to Merkel, to put both stories together would require an entire re-alignment of her racial profiling. It is much easier to brush the Palestinian issue under the rug and pretend it does not exist. Hence also, at a smaller scale, the silence and embarrassment I always encounter in the USA at the mention that I am Palestinian. In other words, it is the stuff most Americans don’t want to talk about, if they happen to know something about it. Returning to my interviewees, a number of them recognize both stories in their discourse. Uri Avnery for example in his campaigns tells both stories to people from both sides. The message he is sending to both sides is: ‘I recognize your story, but here is the other story, in other words, the other half of your story.’ The repetition of one’s story, along with the addition of the other story, plays a role of resignification (to use Derrida’s term) of a new meaning in a new context, a meaning of reconciliation. This is not to relativize the truth value of any story. Rather, it is a means to start looking ‘begovah ha’einayim,’ to recognize the other’s suffering and at the same time to stop playing the victim, but rather

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adopt a role of rebuilding of trust, of human dignity and of a decent future which includes both people. This requires goodwill on both sides, but I do believe that the side which is more militarily capable, and the side which already has a state, is the side that should start off the showing of goodwill. The state of Israel and its institutions does not stand apart from the agency of its people. It is this dialogic relation between the state institutions and the people they represent which can change. It is within the power and the ability of the people of the state of Israel to negotiate a space for more humanism and more equality from within their institutions, as well as the basic respect for human life and human dignity. One of my colleagues, after reading the first half of my book, commented that I do not talk about human friendship, and that it all seems about power relations. I am reminded here of the Palestinian poet, Fadwa Tuqan, in an interview towards the end of her life (‘Tribute to Fadwa,’ http://www.sabeel.org/old/news/Cstone32/FadwaTuqan, 2004), in which she said that she is not naive, she fully understands the expansionist project of the state of Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, but on the other hand and at the same time she believes in the human bond. Her numerous friendships with Jewish people filled her with hope, as she was deeply touched ‘by their humanity’ – to use her own words. In the following section, I directly discuss the interviewees’ vision of an end to the conflict. Some interviewees consider a two-state solution to be essential to resolving the conflict, while others believe in a one-state solution, and yet others do not have a strong opinion either way, as long as the solution guarantees basic human dignity for both peoples. What unites the different perspectives is a general concern for human well-being.

The end to the conflict I start my discussion with Uri Avnery. Avnery conceptualizes the conflict as a clash between two nations with two distinctly different national consciousnesses (lines 4–7). This is a perspective consistent with Avnery’s active involvement in helping to create a Palestinian state

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within the boundaries of the 1967 borders, that is, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. To him, there is a reality of two nations, two peoples, one of them has a state, and the other does not, and therefore, there should be a focus of effort in helping the people without a state to have their own state. Excerpt #1 CS: Do you think the conflict is going to be resolved? UA: Yes it will. Quite sure, because as conflicts are being resolved, new conflicts arise on different lines, about different methods, but this specific conflict of the Israeli, the clash of the Israeli and the Palestinian nations, I think will be resolved by a compromise acceptable to two peoples that will happen when both sides are fed up enough in this conflict. I pressed Avnery on whether people on both sides are fed up yet; his quick response was they are not (lines 2–13). Excerpt #2 CS: You don’t think they are fed up yet? UA: They are not fed up enough. They are fed up, but not enough, not enough to make them ready, and to pay the price of compromise. The peculiar thing about our conflict is that everybody knows what compromise will look like. There is very little discussion left about what the solution will be, what is lacking at this moment, is the will to pay the price, and I would say the fear, the legacy of fear, and hatred, and prejudice left by a 120 years of war. People don’t understand the other side, ignore the other side, see the other side in demonic dimensions and therefore, it’s eh very difficult to get people to believe that peace is possible, the disbelief in peace is, I think, the biggest obstacle to peace on both sides. CS: I already met some women activists on the Israeli side, and they are less optimistic than you are, about resolving the conflict, but one of the lines I heard repeatedly was ‘They’re just

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very different, we don’t understand them, their culture is so different,’ what’s your reaction to that? UA: Of course we are different. CS: Yes. UA: Usually in wars, wars are between different nations; eh, somebody being different does not preclude* understanding the other side, but we need an act of will. You must want to see the other side to understand what are their aspirations, their hopes, their traumas, the beliefs, the disappointments of the other side. If you do not understand this you cannot make peace because you don’t understand why the other side is doing what it is doing. Actually we, in Gush Shalom see this part of the conflict as the most important part, and we devote our main effort to this part, mainly to put the Israeli narrative and the Palestinian narrative one against the other, and try to combine them into a joint narrative of what happened to this country throughout some 20 years, and, eh, we are devoting a lot of our meager resources to this effort. In addition, Avnery directly addresses the issue of the two narratives of the conflict (lines 30–1). At that point he handed me the Peace Bloc pamphlets, which have both the Israeli and the Palestinian flags printed on them, and which restate the perspective of ‘two separate nations, two separate states.’ Avnery has the pamphlet in three languages, Arabic, Hebrew and English. The choice of the three languages is symbolic: he and Gush Shalom are addressing in these pamphlets both peoples as well as the international community. Avnery shows respect for Palestinian self-determination, and expresses to his fellow Israeli Jews that it is no less legitimate than Jewish self-determination. However, he does not challenge or question the notion of nationalism. To him, nationalism of both peoples is a natural order: there is no other way. As I said earlier, it is consistent with his view that the conflict will be resolved only by bringing a Palestinian state to life. Throughout the interview he calls the Palestinians and the Israelis two nations, and he equates their nationalism to the French and the British: meaning each national group is distinct, but in addition,

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he is referring to the historic state of war between the French and British. So, if the French and British can make peace, why can’t the Palestinians and the Israelis? In that perspective, what is missing is the power relation between the two peoples. Israel is a state, a military power, and Palestine is neither. Lastly, Avnery uses ‘Jewish,’ ‘Hebrew’ and ‘Israeli’ interchangeably throughout the interview to refer to Jewish nationalism, and he uses ‘Palestinian’ and ‘Arab’ interchangeably as well. In contrast to Avnery, Ilan Pappé focuses his activism effort on a one-state solution for the two peoples. Excerpt #3 CS: So you think that the two peoples can live, in one state. IP: I, yes. I, if I may borrow from Edward Said. He has one sentence which I really like, that says, I am not quoting him verbatim. I remember it, that it says something about the Jews and Palestinians destined to live together, in one state, not because they would like it, because this is the best solution for them, but because this is the only way they can do it. It means that they have two ways of going about with this fate, so to speak: one is to, to try and have the upper hand, or to accept, and reconcile to the fact that they have to be together. If you look at the geography of this place, the demography in it, the way that the two communities are already intertwined, and their joint history, even the victimizers and the victim, you can see that trying to separate them will inflict even more evil than already had been inflicted, especially on the Palestinian side, but also on the Jewish side, and, and therefore, I think that living together politically, not living together intimately, I’m not talking about necessarily intermarriages in great numbers and things like that, of course this will come as well. I think I’m talking about living together politically. That’s something different from living together privately. Living together politically means that you have to search for a political structure that if one wants can be binational rather than unitary, but, but it really means there

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is a basic sharing of the land, of the state, of the past, of the resources, and in responsibility for the future. Pappé’s vision of a one-state solution, which he has been advocating publicly, relies on a perspective that it is hard to separate the two peoples geographically and politically in this intimate land (lines 5–6, the Jews and the Palestinians). But not only that, psychologically speaking, both peoples feel victimized, and it is hard to separate the victimizer and the victim (line 13). This echoes one of the dialogues in the Palestinian movie Paradise Now, where the main character, the suicide bomber-to-be, agonizes on the impossibility of separating the victim from the victimizer in the whole equation. Pappé’s perspective, unlike the one in the movie, is a perspective of hope, hope that both peoples can live together, politically speaking. I wanted Pappé to elaborate on how a one-state solution is feasible, so he added the following. Excerpt #4 CS: Do you think this is feasible? IP: Not in the near future, for sure. I think in the near future, none of the models we have for peace is feasible. Anyway, I don’t think the two-state solution is feasible. I don’t think the onestate solution is feasible, not in the short run. I think in the short run, the political elites are going uh, towards one collision after the other, one cycle of violence after the other. I can’t, don’t see any strategy or planning on either side, or in the international community that wants or can stop it. But the long term, the long term is something which is very difficult to predict, because I think one ingredient that people don’t like to talk about, which has to be taken into account, is that, if foreign policies indeed wreak havoc and destruction, it may make people in the future more open about alternative use. It’s not good to say it, because nobody would say ‘I, I preach for more destruction, so that people would be more open-minded about my own views,’ kind of the approach to history in politics, but I think it, this, this is part of the long-term evaluation: is that you believe that there is something in, in that appreciation by political scientists,

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of societies that would be exhausted by violence, by recurring fighting, and so on, and therefore, I think that the word ‘optimism’ is a bit dangerous here, ’cause I’m, I hasten to, I hesitate to say it, that I am optimistic because I think that they would be more reluctant, and then eventually, people will be more openminded. It doesn’t sound like the best [laughter] recipe, so I’m realistic. I think that it can, it can happen, and as an activist, I don’t think we should, that’s my feeling about activism. I don’t think activism of the genuine kind is really bothered by questions of feasibility, if, if we will ask ourselves about real politics and feasibility, there is very little we could do. I’m engaged now in a long thing with, futile debate, with Noam Chomsky, who claims that, that we, that I have to agree with a two-state solution because that’s the only realistic solution, given the balance of power. I don’t know. For me, balance of power is something that changes with time. I would like to build a vision not based on the balance of power, but based on certain principles, and uh, according to these principles, I would like to see a very good ... Pappé relies on the intellectual legacy of people like Edward Said (excerpt #3, line 2) who believed firmly in the intertwining history of the two peoples as a result of colonial doings. Pappé also warns that external intervention does not help, because the intervening parties have an interest in keeping power structured to their advantage (excerpt #4, lines 12–13). Again, this perspective is informed by reading the lessons from history carefully, as Pappé stresses at the beginning of the interview how his academic pursuit as a historian helped him see the conflict in its historic context. In addition, he mentions the ongoing debate between him and Noam Chomsky, who advocates a two-state solution based on a realistic view of the balance of power (excerpt #4, lines 30–7). Pappé believes that his activism can change reality (excerpt #4, lines 24–30). In contrast to both Avnery and Pappé, Amneh Badran thinks the question of a one-state or a two-state solution is irrelevant, as neither addresses human rights. To her also, Palestinians should be considered as equal partners in this whole equation. ‘I don’t think that the

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road to Jerusalem starts from Beirut, Tunis, or Amman. It starts from Jerusalem’ (lines 8–9), alluding to the schism the PLO created by dictating the negotiation route with Israel from Beirut, or Tunis (see Ashrawi, 1995). Excerpt #5 CS: How do you see the conflict ending? AB: I can’t see that the conflict will end, on the short term or even the medium term, but I think it, it, it depends very much on how much the Palestinians can review their strategies of resistance, their ability to develop a new leadership, their ability to do active steadfastness, and to work, a lot, to do a lot of work internally, and to work with the international community, to make a pressure on Israel. I don’t think that the road to Jerusalem starts from Beirut, Tunis, or Amman. It starts from Jerusalem. Sure this is my conviction, this is my conviction, so I think we have to do a lot of work to, to, to empower, to, to, to make, to contribute to a situation that allows active steadfastness, resistance, steadfastness, and at the same time to work on the international level. I will stand for keeping some space for political interaction between the Palestinians and Israelis, but this will not be, this, the major factor, even though I am working in this field, but I am sure at this point of my work that this is of the small factors, but bearing in mind, how much the Israeli society is raised into racism, and how much it is limiting itself, to, to a national Jewish state notion and the ethos of Zionism. I think there are no space for them to see the other, and not even, I, I want them to see me equal but they don’t see me even! Badran, also in contrast to Pappé, has faith in the international community in helping solve the conflict (lines 7–8). Her perspective on the conflict is that the Palestinian national movement is resisting Israel’s expansionism and control of Palestinian life, and it is the responsibility of the Palestinians themselves to achieve their self-determination through insistence on their national rights (lines 10–13). She refers to the two national groups as Palestinians and Israelis throughout the interview

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(example line 15). Badran also believes that Israelis’ racism, stemming from Zionist ideology (lines 17–20), is preventing the Israeli side from acknowledging the Palestinian demands (lines 20–21). In that, she is expressing a perspective on racism that is consistent with what Critical Discourse Analysis scholars claim, namely that racism starts from above, in other words, from the more powerful (see van Dijk, 1997a). In the next excerpt, Shulamit Aloni presents her perspective on ending the conflict. It is a perspective consistent with her views that human rights should be the major concern in any future solution in this land. Excerpt #6 CS: Yeah, uh, do you see a viable Palestinian state? SA: I think that the Palestinian people, what we are doing, we are destroying them. We are provoking one group against the other. When the Israelis say again and again, the Israeli government, and they’ve learned Bush say the same thing, that uh Mr. Abu Mazin has to stop the terrorism. There, now what we want is a civil war there, that they will start a civil war, because their terrorism is not more terrorism than we are doing there with our aircrafts, with our uh tanks, with our army. Because the army belongs to a government. It doesn’t mean that what we are doing there is legitimate and after going to one place and another, really, to kill their people, to bomb them, to destroy their houses. This is OK and, we, because the Christian world has kind of a guilt feeling towards Israel, and, we always play that we are the victim, so listen to Mr. Bush and others, ‘Israel has the right to defend itself.’ Now, Israel is now the strongest state, and has the strongest army in the Middle East, and one of the strongest in the world. The Palestinian has no, nothing of this, so from who does Israel have to defend itself? We have peace with Egypt. We have peace with Jordan. Syria and Lebanon are, are not the problem, and Syria is ready to make peace, but we want the Golan Heights. Iraq is not a threat any more. Iran is the problem of the whole world, not of Israel, so from whom we have to defend ourselves? From the Palestinians?

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Aloni, like Badran, understands that it is Israeli government policies which are responsible for the misery of the Palestinian people, in other words, Israel violates human rights by destroying the lives of the Palestinian people and by bringing them to the verge of a civil war (lines 6–7, the interview was conducted before actual clashes between Fatah and Hamas occurred). In addition, Aloni challenges the meaning of the word ‘terrorism’ (lines 7–8). She criticizes Bush for defending Israeli violations (line 15). Aloni in excerpt #7 addresses the issue of Israeli victimhood. Excerpt #7 SA: Now the Palestinians are fighting for work. They are fighting for their self-determination, but what our leaders with their psychological, are doing to the Israeli public, saying again and again, that the Palestinians want to throw us to the sea. OK and working on all the traumas of the Jewish people, and I am asking them, ‘Let’s assume that the Palestinians want to throw us to the sea, can they? Have they the means to do it?’ It’s so idiotic, but once you repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, now is the book of one of the so-called intellectuals, which was published, uh journalist, uh Shavit, and he say that the trauma is, and they put it as in a balance that the Palestinians have the trauma that they are, are occupied and our trauma is that we are threatened – by whom are we threatened? By this, our people who use the psychology of the Jewish people to make us feel that there is a threat, that they will throw us to the sea, can they? Just one has to think, can they? Let’s assume they want it badly. They want it specially when last year, or it was two years ago, when the, they had the meeting of the Arab League in Lebanon, and these Arab Saudi brought the problem, that the moment we recognize the Palestinian state they are ready to make peace with Israel, all of them, so why we feel that we are the victim, once we victimize the others. Now my people don’t like to hear what I’m saying but, they say it is a free country so, I am saying it [laughter].

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Aloni, unlike mainstream Israeli politicians, critically tackles the issue of victimhood (lines 4–16), with a perspective that Israeli politicians and intellectuals alike play on the past traumas of the Jewish people. She objects to equating the Palestinian victimhood with the Jewish because she is asking the question, at the moment, who are the Jewish people victims of (line 13)? Aloni sees the key to normal relations between Israel and its neighbors is by solving the Palestinian issue. One last note, Aloni uses the words Palestinian and Israeli to describe the two national groups, however, when she talks about traumas of the past, she uses the word Jewish, making the historic distinction between the Jews who were targeted in Europe, and the Israelis who are no longer victims. In excerpt #8, Mahdi Abd Al-Hadi demonstrates a pessimistic perspective on solving the problem. It is based on what he sees as a Zionist ethos of three strands (lines 3–16). Excerpt #8 CS: How do you see the end of the conflict? What’s your vision? MAH: Well, we have many scenarios for this conflict. The easiest one, of course, if there is no Zionism, and now people start being careful about the three phases of Zionism: religious Zionists who want all the land, and Sharon came to shake that value, and that principle, and the religious Zionists by withdrawing from Gaza or certain checkpoints in the West Bank, and then you have the political Zionists who wanted an Arab recognition, not a Palestinian recognition. They want legitimacy, revolution from the Arab world, on the expenses of the Palestinians, since we don’t exist in their political dictionary. Eh, and now, Sharon again came to shake that school of thought, by having Peres and others within his Kadima movement, eh, what is left, is practical Zionists, which now deciding the conversion plan, meaning that, eh, putting a new partition for what is left of Palestine, the wall which is like a sharp knife cutting our flesh, the wall as a new partition plan, as more separation between the two peoples, and putting us into three

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cantons: Nablus Jenin Tulkarem, one separated entity, Ramallah separated entity, and Hebron separated entity, and Gaza is a different world, totally separated, so what is left for Palestine is, 10 per cent of a British mandate Palestine. Where is the Palestinian state? Where is the two-state solution, so are we talking on apartheid system? Are we talking about one state with two identities, two cultures, two heritage, two narratives, two people, but different system governing us, one system for the Jewish people in court is called Israel, and another system for the majority of the Arabs and the Palestinians in particular, who are now three and four and a half million on the territories, and four in the Diaspora. I don’t see a solution today. It’s too what you call it, too wrong to think of a solution today, because the reality on the ground does not lead you to a two-state solution, and the reality of the political, the practical Zionism which is now shaken by Olmert. Labor Party is not there, and again the question of the Arab world is a corrupted system, crippled with corruption, and following after US, and Western politics, so where we go from here? Abd Al-Hadi blames Zionism for the misery of the Palestinian people. In his perspective there are three versions of Zionism: religious (line 5), political (line 9) and practical (line 14). The first two have been destroyed by Ariel Sharon’s actions. The first through leaving Gaza and thus violating the religious view that you don’t compromise the land of Israel. The political version of Zionism seeks Arab but not Palestinian recognition, that is, normal relations with the neighboring countries regardless of what is going on with the Palestinians. This latter Zionism is exemplified by Labor Zionism and by people like Shimon Peres (line 13), but by Peres joining the Kadima party (established by Sharon and advertised as being centrist), Sharon is undercutting political Zionism. So what is left is practical Zionism demonstrating itself in the separation wall and other practical separation systems of governance. In addition, in Abd Al-Hadi’s perspective, what goes on now is only conflict management and not an intended peace between the two peoples. According to Abd Al-Hadi, this will lead to apartheid: two

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peoples in one land with two systems of governance (lines 23–9, excerpt #8, and lines 1–3 and 14–15, excerpt #9). Excerpt #9 I would be too wrong, if I envision a solution for the conflict, but I will see conflict management, and this conflict management, meaning that either today we will have a separation, Palestinian, with less land and more people on it, cantonization, separation, apartheid system, or sooner or later it is one land with two peoples, but different systems governing it. I don’t see Palestinians melting in Jordan or Syria or Lebanon. I don’t see a Palestinian solution on Arab land. I don’t see this idea of coming back to Jordan–Palestine confederation, federation, because Palestinians insisted and committed to their land, and homeland and identity, and they will never accept an alternative, and I don’t see Palestinian leadership able to carry on any mission, not the one built on the consensus on Palestine, which means, that we will not melt in Israel nor in the Arab world, and we will continue to be this culture of the prison for the coming decade, and I don’t see a solution. I see conflict management. I see crisis management on daily basis, periodically, but no solution, since there is no freedom, no independence for the Palestinians, by the end of the day. They tell me, ‘How can we share the Jerusalem, if it is not open city, shell city, two sovereignties, two capitals, two flag, two municipalities?’ which is a mission impossible of today’s Jerusalem, where I claim that I lost the city. It has been Israelized all the way, and cut off totally from the rest of Palestine. Without Jerusalem, there is no Palestine. Without the old city of Jerusalem, there is no Jerusalem at all. Further, Abd Al-Hadi seems to have lost any hope in a resolution to the conflict, in the next excerpt. Excerpt #10 So any solution, any scenarios of today, who is talking about a way out of this messy, muddy, conflict is looking for a mission

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impossible. It’s the question of coexistence. How can we coexist as human being, as two people with their values, and principles without dehumanizing each other, and without bleeding on daily basis? And looking for a system where we can share the land in the future, but I don’t see the current politics, the 2000 the, what you call it, the world agenda can offer us a system where we can share the land, with no bleeding mentally. We are bleeding, so how can we? As it physically, it’s very ugly, very painful, and I see more and more Israeli distance from the Palestinians. I see more and more denial of the Palestinians from the Israeli side. As long as we are behind the walls, in slums, they don’t care. They don’t want to see. They don’t want to know, and this ignorance, or this apathy, what you call it, this kind of denial, is too wrong, because by the end of the day, they will wake up to see us in their own kitchen. Abd Al-Hadi sees more and more denial of Palestinian rights by the state of Israel (lines 12–13, excerpt #10). He also puts Jerusalem at the center of any solution to the conflict (lines 18–24, excerpt #9 and lines 3–4, excerpt #10). Abd Al-Hadi does not deny external intervention and its negative results (line 8, excerpt #10). The conflict does not stand outside of history, and in his assessment, the way global politics is going, it is going to be hard to solve the conflict in a way that guarantees Palestinian self-determination. As a result, Abd Al-Hadi is very pessimistic, ‘I don’t see a solution’ (line 15, excerpt #9). Rather than a solution to the conflict, he sees conflict management (lines 15–16, excerpt #9). In the next excerpt, I press Naomi Chazan on the issue of Israel and Zionism. Chazan is an advocate of a two-state solution which respects the 1967 borders. Excerpt #11 CS: How do you envision the future of the Palestinians who live inside Israel? NC: Equal citizens of the state, period!

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CS: Of a Zionist state? NC: I don’t know what a Zionist state. It’s a democratic state that will have a Jewish majority. And it is the state of all its citizens, period! Again I’m very, that means there has to be full equality, individual and national within Israel. In accord with Chazan’s perspective of a two-state solution, where the Palestinians will have their state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and Israel will have the rest of the historic land, Palestinians inside Israel will have a minority status in a democratic state which guarantees everyone’s rights. To Chazan, in contrast to Pappé, there is an insistence on a Jewish majority inside the 1967 borders, and I would say with confidence that this is the majority opinion of Israelis who support a Palestinian state. This is also in accordance with Bill Clinton’s arguing the necessity for Israel having to have the demographic edge during the September 2000 Camp David negotiations (see Suleiman and O’Connell, 2007). It is to be noted that I pressed Aloni too on the question of Zionism and whether it is compatible with human rights. Aloni evaded the question by stating that she does not know what I mean when I say ‘Zionism,’ as there are different Zionist ideologies which is a valid point. However, it does not address the direct question of the Palestinian natives and where they fit in Zionist ideology. In the next excerpt, Gila Svirsky expresses her perspective on resolving the conflict. It is consistent with her vision of two states, Palestinian and Israeli (lines 11–12) side by side and following the 1967 border (except for two large settlements in the West Bank, Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim, lines 4–5). Excerpt #12 CS: Do you see a viable Palestinian state? GS: I do. I think there are two main problems, two main obstacles to the state, and I believe that they can be resolved but, with great difficulty. The two obstacles are: Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim, both of those settlements, together have, about fifty to sixty thousand people living there, and that’s a great many

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people to begin to evacuate. We’re trying to evacuate 8,000 people in Gaza, and you can see the mess, I, I think that all the other issues are easily resolved, not just can be resolved, are easily resolved. I think the issue of these two settlements is difficult. I think that, the resolution will have to be one that creates a, a new model for, for two countries side by side, and in the new model there will be a state of Israel independent and sovereign and, a state of Palestine independent and sovereign. Svirsky perceives two states, where the two big settlements of Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim stay in Palestinian territory but with Israeli sovereignty. As for Jerusalem, she believes it should be a capital of two states, with what she calls ‘porous borders’ (line 3, excerpt #13) to ease the movement between both parts. As for Jerusalem, she believes in sharing the city (lines 2–3, excerpt #13). Excerpt #13 There will be these two settlements who somehow, somehow will remain and have access to the state of Israel. The city of Jerusalem will be the capital of both states, and a porous border, a porous border that will enable Palestinians to enter Palestine and enable Israelis to enter, to enter Jerusalem, so that, in a sense, they will have access to the rest of Israel, just as we have access to the rest of the West Bank. That’s not common, except today of course, in the European Union, where you can move easily from state to state. I believe that, that’s the future for this area: two independent states with a porous border between them, and somehow Ma’ale Adumim and Ariel remaining where they are, and having access to Israel, until hopefully, at some point, I, I’m not sure how the legal status of Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim will be worked out, but certainly we have to have a contiguous complete state of Palestine, side by side with Israel. I mean from north to south there has to be a complete control of Palestinians, complete! As well as a safe passage, easy passage, in the hands of Palestinians between Gaza and the West Bank so these are, it will take creativity and

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imagination and goodwill, but I believe that in the framework of a peace agreement all of those things are possible Both states, Svirsky believes, could have neighboring relations just like the European Union countries have (lines 7–8). In other words, Svirsky’s solution is simple, and practical, and straightforward. The resolution to the conflict is not as simple or straightforward for Mohammad Zaidan in the next excerpt, as he raises the question of justice for the refugees and as he raises the issue of the status of the Palestinians inside Israel. Excerpt #14 CS: What do you think is a viable solution to the conflict? MZ: I think the minimum first of all, if we speak of, as I spoke in the beginning, we are speaking about real politics here, not about pure justice. I don’t know if there is pure justice, the minimum solution that is required and accepted by the majority of the Palestinian people, is the two-state solution in the ’67 border, and the right of return. I don’t think as I said, this will bring full justice to the Palestinians. I don’t think this is acceptable by all the Israelis, or will be accepted by the majority of Israelis, but I think, for the majority of the Palestinians, this is the minimum accepted solution. I don’t think for the refugees there is any justice, or solution for their problem will be, if we don’t end their status as refugees, that means, they will come back in accordance to that, in the international resolutions, and international law, and human right principles, so the minimum solution that we can speak, is one baggage of two-state solutions, with a clear border, accepted by the two sides, and the green what’s called green line, and the right of return for refugees. Zaidan is concerned about the refugee problem which did not get mentioned in the Oslo Accords and in what followed. To him, a two-state solution is a practical solution but it does not bring justice. In addition, he addresses the status of the Palestinians inside Israel, an issue,

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he believes, that has been ignored at least since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. Excerpt #15 Concerning the Palestinians inside Israel, because this is another component that usually we don’t speak about it, when we speak about that, the bigger crisis? or the bigger issue concerning our status, I don’t think there will be any peaceful life for the Palestinians inside Israel, as, as a minority without the acceptance of this minority, by the majority, and that will be, that will require the majority to recognize that inside 1948 borders, there are two peoples who are living: the Palestinians and the Israelis. There is almost 20 per cent, 22 some say, 18 but it’s big minority of Palestinians that have individual rights, and have collective rights that will require share of power inside the state, and inside the state of Israel and the minimum requirement for, at least starting this process, will be the ending of the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, that Israel is recognized, will be recognized as a state with two people, of two nationalities, with two different nationalities, are living in and, and of course with all of the related changes in the legal system which will lead to basically, equality between the individuals and the two nationalities that are living inside Israel. Zaidan is concerned with how to bring more equality in rights in the state of Israel for this minority. In fact, from my conversation with him, this is the issue which motivates him towards activism, as he believes that since the Oslo Accords were signed the Palestinians inside Israel have been left behind, and they need to take care of themselves. Note that this concern about the fragmentation of Palestinian society was expressed to me by other Palestinians such as Badran, as she states that there is no one Palestinian issue at the moment, rather, Gaza, Hebron, Ramallah, Jerusalem, all separate issues. In the next excerpt Samira Khouri remains consistent with her belief in the legality of the partition plan (UN Resolution 181) which was followed by UN Resolution 194, which acknowledges the rights

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of the refugees, and Resolution 242 after the Six Day War, which asked Israel to retreat from territory occupied during the war, and finally Resolution 338 which reiterates Resolution 242. In other words, Khouri focuses on the legal aspect of the conflict and on implementing UN resolutions as necessary for resolving the conflict (lines 3, 13). Excerpt #16 CS: What do you think of a viable solution to the problem, to the Palestinian problem? SK: I think the best solution is to believe and to struggle for the resolution of the United Nations, to have this, the 181, to implement it, to have two states: Palestinian state and Arab state, and the first thing to do that is, that Israelis should withdraw their troops from all the occupied territories. This is the first thing, and the resolution should be to give the right to the Palestinians, to build their own state. This is first of all, and, the refugee, the refugee problem should be implemented like all the decisions the United Nations decided in 1948, the 194 this is the most important resolution, to let the refugees come back to their houses, even if, and they should be debate, where to come back to, if they have people, Jewish people who live in their house, they can take another place, like it, it is the same thing. To the refugees who are in, the inner refugees, we have refugees here, in a Tamra, Damoun who are from Dannun and all the other villages, we have here in Nazareth from Mjedel, from Safuryeh, from Ma’alul, all these villages are here, they, they’re built on the, the Jews built settlement or villages or cities in their land, there should be another place and there are so many empty lands near them, near Mjedel we have empty lands, near Safuryeh we have very, very good places for us, to give back the lands of refugees here, and abroad. This should be implemented in this way. Of course there are many obstacles, but many do not agree, but I guess that most of the world now agrees for this resolution. The problem is the United States who did not, who do not agree for

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that and Israel, and there are others that like in New Zealand, is going according to the United States. But most of the countries, and most of the people in the world agree on this thing. In other words, Khouri is focusing on the legal issues and on practical solutions such as how to absorb some refugees (including internal refugees, people who left their villages to come to live in places like Nazareth), and help them rebuild abandoned villages from 1948 such as Damoun, Ma’alul and Safuryeh (lines 17–19, note Khouri’s listing of the ruined village names in the Palestinian dialect). In addition, Khouri brings her experience of the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995, and how most women supported the right of Palestinians for self-determination and a two-state solution based on UN resolutions. Excerpt #17 I remember that when we were, I remember when we were in Beijing, in Beijing, in 1995 I was there, and there were 45,000 women in the congress and most of them all over the world, and all of them agree for two states for Palestinian and for Israel. All of them agree for the resolution of 194, to let them, and all the resolutions of the United Nations 338, 242. All these resolutions are very good for the for implementing, the issue of the Palestinians. This is what I believe, and I’m so sad, because of what’s happening now in the Palestinian state. I call it a state already. I call it state, of the occupied territories, it’s very it’s a pity, the, the quarrel between Hamas and between Fatah, and between all the other parts of the Palestinian, Palestinian. It’s a pity it will not give them the opportunity, so as* people to understand what’s going on and to pay their sympathy, to them and to support. This is not good. I also think, that that Israel is now, we have a very big movement from the peace movement, but it is a little bit quiet, aside because of what is going on, in the occupied territories, the quarrel between the Palestinians themselves, the brothers themselves killing their, their some of them, and quarrel with each other it’s a it will not help.

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At the Women’s Conference, she and other participants appealed to the women present at the conference from all over the world and they supported the right of the Palestinians for a state in accord with UN resolutions (lines 1–4). In the next excerpt, Nabila Espanioly describes her perspective on the solving of the conflict. She is open to a one-state solution, but she doesn’t think it is feasible, rather a two-state solution is a more attainable goal (as we will see also in excerpt #20, lines 25–6). Excerpt #18 CS: How do you see the end of the conflict, or, a viable solution? NE: Oh OK, now I mean, my, my political perception says that there is no possibility for any future, equal existence, not existence. I, I, I believe there is no coexistence without existence. If I’m not a proud Palestinian, I wouldn’t be able to work directly with a Jew, and stand in the same eye level, with a Jewish person. This is one. Secondly, I think that there is a need for, because our history is also, the discourse of our history and the Jewish history, is different, I think that, and what had happened in 1948 had to be analyzed, and that everyone concerned had to take responsibility for ’48, that is, the Jewish population that lives in Israel, Zionist and non-Zionist, should take responsibility for what had happened in ’48. We also, as Palestinians had to take responsibility for what had happened in ’48. We had to take responsibility for our part, that is the, we had to take responsibility for the lack of democratization, in ’48, lack of the, the, the, following the leaders and close our eyes, the belief of, that, that the help would come from outside. I think we had to take responsibility, for many issues that we had had experience. By taking responsibilities, internal issues, we have to take it, for ourselves. We had to analyze what happened in ’48, and it’s not by chance. Espanioly here brings a perspective of re-examining what happened in 1948, re-evaluating the role of the Palestinians in bringing about the Nakba, as well as the role of Israel.

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Excerpt #19 I think that very, very few I think, there was one woman, who did work on our responsibilities but, most of the documentation that we have about ’48, most of the papers presentation we do about ’48, is their responsibility and not our responsibility. I think both should be taking responsibility: responsibility for the Jews means also, to recognize that they were responsible for the destroying of 480 villages, recognize the refugees, internal refugees, and outside refugees, what the destroyment of all the villages, the infrastructure destroyment in the Palestinian communities, all the infrastructure was, I mean all of the beginning of industrialization in Nazareth for example, the small fabric that we have, was destroyed in the factory, so it’s not about all the people tend to take ’48 as the refugees question. I believe that, if we, I’m demanding from the Jews not only of the question of the refugees, not only the law of return, but also the responsibilities for the damages that exist, occurred to our societies, to our Palestinian society, but again, I’m requesting from our responsibility, to our own role in, in, in ’48 and document that role. I mean if you look at the role of the women in Nazareth, how they prohibited the plan to transfer the people from Al-Hara Al-Shari’iyyeh [the eastern neighborhood] across the border, and how they stand in front of the trucks, who came to transfer people, and how they sit on the street and demonstrate and so on, and so on. I mean, this is something to learn. We don’t have enough alliances and enough studies on that role, on the role of resistance and the role Palestinian resistance, not the Qawuqji [Arab military leader] resistance. I’m speaking about Palestinian resistance on the role of the men, and the women who struggled in, in ’36 and struggled in ’48 and struggled to stay, and the role of the people who sell their last piece of gold, or rock or whatever land, to buy a water. This responsibility of the Palestinians there were some people who took responsibility, who tried to change the situation, but the leadership, also the responsibilities of the leadership, they have to analyze, I think that it is the, it’s, it’s taking all that in consideration. I believe deeply, it has to be.

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Espanioly is also paying attention to what hasn’t been written about the Nakba, such as the role of women in resisting the transfer of population, in other words, the expulsion, and how women from the eastern neighborhood in Nazareth did not leave, in spite of the plan to force the population to leave. History books discuss the roles of Arab military units, and leaders such as the Qawuqji, but not what the population was doing to defy expulsion. It is to be noted that Avnery discussed with me how Nazareth was saved from the fate of other Arab towns and villages. He told me that the Jewish military leader received orders to expel the population of Nazareth but was reluctant to obey, as he understood the moral implication of what he was doing. When David Ben-Gurion (who became the first prime minister of Israel) found out the order was not followed, it was too late to do something about it, and therefore the people of Nazareth were saved. The military leader left the country disenchanted and never came back. Espanioly continues her soul-searching as to why 1948 happened. Excerpt #20 I’m as a feminist too, I think self-determination is the first step for the future, for building peace and self-determination means, and Israel had its self-determination, or if, ya’ni, people could argue. I think today, there is less and less people arguing if they have the right or they don’t have the right for self-determination. Meanwhile they have the right for self-determination, because they created they, ya’ni, it was created already, when we were here, and we were not aware or what was going on in the ’20s, and I always say that when I review the history, the education in Palestine, to see already in the 1920s the Jewish education system had already had independent in 1920, and is doing independent from the British mandate, where were we where, were we they, we were connected to the British mandate, and discriminated against, from the budgetary from the village government, and the Israelis were building their education system independently, so I think it’s not about, it’s not only ’48 taking all that in consideration. I think in the only possibilities, is to have two states

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at the beginning and two states, or two forms of self-determination, is that these two states I have to say that these two states couldn’t live totally in total division from each other, so I think that at the end, you have to find a form of cooperation, a form of, but to reach that, I mean you have to have two states. The problem is that if you look around the West Bank and Gaza today, you see it is almost impossible, to have two states, so how to go about these two states. I have difficulties believing that you could have one democratic state, or if we have it, it’s, I mean it could be as a vision, ya’ni, I mean, I don’t have anything against it, I think that in the end, maybe, we and Jordan and Egypt and Israel and Lebanon could be united in the Middle Eastern part. I don’t know what, but separation, or that kind, I think to reach there we have to have two states. Espanioly’s perspective is to solve the conflict by allowing for Palestinian self-determination, just as it was allowed for Israel in 1948, and for the Palestinians to talk to Israelis on equal terms (at the level of the eyes). But she also calls for the Palestinian people to re-examine themselves, and their responsibility for what happened to them. A comparison between the two national movements in the 1920s shows a Jewish educational system well developed by the Zionist movement, but she cannot say the same thing about the Palestinian side. She also calls for studying the history of the Nakba and learning from it, and she doesn’t mean by that the official history of the leadership, but rather what the simple people did, and how they reacted heroically to circumstances larger than anything they could have imagined. She mentions the example of a particular neighborhood in Nazareth and how they resisted transfer to another location, and the role of women in all that because ‘I’m as a feminist’ (line 1, excerpt #20). In other words, she is calling for the Palestinian story to come out, but not what the leaders did, rather what the common people did. Espanioly is asking Israelis to face what happened in 1948 too, the destruction of 480 Palestinian villages (lines 6–7, excerpt #19). Like Khouri, she makes a distinction between two types of refugees, internal (those who were displaced within the borders of 1948 Israel) and the external refugees (who

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found themselves in the neighboring countries) and looks for a moral solution for both. Lastly, similarly to Pappé and Avnery, Espanioly uses the terms ‘Israelis,’ ‘Jewish,’ alongside the terms ‘Palestinian’ or ‘Arab.’

Conclusion My interviewees, whether men or women, Jews or Arabs, believe in self-determination for both peoples. They may disagree on what that means and on how it should be executed, but they agree on the broad lines. In other words, their concern, whether explicit or not, is moral in essence. I started this chapter with a discussion of Merkel’s visit to the Knesset. Peace groups have already acknowledged what, unfortunately, Merkel has not. A number of interviewees stress the Hebrew idiom of ‘to treat each other at the level of the eyes.’ They also stress the issue of human rights. As for Massad’s analysis of how Europeans, and by implication Americans, categorize Arabs and Jews, if we accept that, then these men and women have done a remarkable job in resisting such profiling and in creating a space where both peoples preserve their dignity in the land of Israel/Palestine. I must add that Gush Shalom, in their weekly bulletin on the net, wrote of Merkel’s visit: Kanzlerin Merkel made a pilgrimage to Israel, and groveled before Olmert and Barak. Before and after her, other world leaders did the same. They did not do any good to Israel. They hurt it. Real friends of Israel would not encourage Olmert and Barak to continue on a road that leads to disaster. (March 20, 2008, www.gushshalom.org) It is to be noted that the issue of refugees, both internal and external, was raised by the Palestinians from Nazareth, and while they see that a solution to the problem is feasible and they are not pessimistic, the picture is more complex for them. It is more straightforward for their Jewish counterparts such as Svirsky, Chazan, Aloni or Avnery.

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In addition, the issue of the internal refugees is absent also from the perspective of the Palestinians from Jerusalem. Their vision, generally, is that of solving the pressing issues of how to become a state in the West Bank and Gaza and what is going to happen to Jerusalem.

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10 CONCLUSION

Language is born in dialogue – to cite the great twentieth-century thinker Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘language enters life through concrete utterances (which manifest language) and life enters language through concrete utterances as well’ (Bakhtin 1999: 122). It is the very conviction on my part which pushed me to write a book on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict (as it is called now) with a focus on the language of peace activists on both sides of the equation. It is due to the central role that language plays in constructing our social reality and our sense of who we are that the dialogue that takes place between both Israelis and Palestinians has the ability to reshape the conflict into a ‘non-conflict.’ One could argue that the conflict has more of a reality than just language: military, political and economic power structures. That is all true, but one should never forget the human agency in creating, challenging and changing any reality, and human agency always involves language as a central part of a larger semiotic world which we occupy and which shapes, but at the same time is shaped by us (members of a society), and the institutions which represent us. Further, language production and reception is always perspectival, meaning that every utterance has a point of view. Perspectivity allows us, as researchers, to find the linkage between two levels of analysis: the macro and the more micro level of interaction. It is a basic human condition to be aware that other perspectives exist, as well as to acknowledge other perspectives than one’s own. Perspectivity is always the psychological individual expression of a dialogically

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(socially, culturally and historically) built worldview. It is therefore of significance to discuss the historic, cultural, political and intellectual contexts of the conflict before engaging with the data itself. I showed the section on what the interviewees think of peace to students at a Florida university. I omitted the names from the transcripts and as a result the students did not know the sex or the nationality of each of the interviewee. The results show that the students made many errors predicting the gender as well as the nationality of the speaker. I can say with confidence that the results were random. In addition, I asked the students to write five reasons why they thought a speaker was male or female. Their answers gave me insight into the students’ perspective on gender roles. They relied on stereotypes of men and women that are prevalent in US society. The two people whose gender students mixed up all the time were Pappé, the Israeli historian who believes in a one-state solution, and Dayan. For example, all of them thought Pappé was female because he is a pacifist, in other words, he is talking about getting along, which my students thought is a female perspective on human relations. On the other hand, all of them mistook Dayan for a male speaker. Their justification for that was that they thought there was a sense of militarism and tactics in her speech. The justifications for their judgment of whether an interviewee was female or male were similar in tone; hence my conclusion that they rely on stereotypes in their judgments. As for the nationality of the speaker, I could not detect any consistency in the students’ judgments. This is surprising at face value, judging by the amount of time the media in the US dedicates to news from Israel and the occupied territories. But, on a second look, it is not. The national divide between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ between ‘Palestinian’ and ‘Israeli’ also collapses once human rights and dignity become a concern, which is a testimony to how little difference there is among humans at the basic level of human rights, and perhaps can serve as yet another point of hope when we look forward for a future together. In other words, my students in the US did not see the national boundaries between both peoples as captured in discourse about human rights, nor did my interviewees make that distinction while discussing human rights. It is a concept which transcends boundaries and proves them irrelevant for human interaction.

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It seems, generally speaking, that the national divide between Palestinians and Jewish Israelis is more in the foreground than the gender divide for both Palestinian and Israeli activists, even though my women informants on both sides do value the woman-to-woman talk about the conflict, and even though men admit that it makes their work both harder and easier at the same time because of their gender. It is to be noted, too, that the importance of the national divide holds true for both groups of Palestinians (in Nazareth and Jerusalem) in relation to the Jewish Israelis, in spite of the different citizenship status of Jerusalemites and Nazarenes. This seems to be independent of the tensions both groups feel toward each other. It has been often noted that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip do not trust the Palestinians inside what became Israel. They generally see them as more integrated and more collaborative with the state of Israel, as they live under its laws. However, symbolically speaking, both groups (among those I interviewed) see themselves as Palestinian. As for the future outlook, many Jewish activists advocate a position of a two-state solution. That is, there is a larger discourse which designates a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine as two neighboring states, with Israel being a state with a Jewish majority and an Arab Palestinian minority. It seems a practical solution at first glance. However, it raises a question which many human rights activists have asked. Why do we insist on two states if the issue at stake is human rights? Can’t one state do the same job? The insistence on Israel being demographically primarily Jewish seems to unite a number of political strands among Israeli Jews, as it guarantees a Jewish majority within the borders of the state of Israel. However, there is danger in articulating this position. The more the two-state solution became articulated and gathered force, the more Jewish people started to discuss a transfer of the Arabs from inside Israel. Norman Finkelstein (2003) warns that if a transfer happens, there is a historical precedent in the history of the USA – a significant one considering the important role the USA has played in this conflict. It is crucial to note that Finkelstein refers to Palestinians in all of historic Palestine, as he sees their transfer is still a possibility because of the USA’s support for many Israeli policies, and because

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of the largely complicit role that US media is alleged to play in the conflict. A glance at some major US and British media commemorating Israel’s 60th birthday could explain this further. Amid the praise for Israel’s accomplishments lie very brief mentions of the Palestinian grievances, as well as brief mentions of the fact that the majority of Israelis approve of the transfer of the Arabs from their historic homes to outside the boundaries of the state of Israel (see Bronner, 2008; Remnick, 2008: 76; The Economist, 2008: 58). None of the above-mentioned articles presents any moral qualms about this issue. It is my conviction that peace activists on the Jewish side who insist on this formula may – wittingly or unwittingly – encourage this discourse. Palestinians within Israel who embrace the two-state approach also run the risk of putting themselves in a subordinate situation under ‘majority rule.’ Human rights should be the main concern, regardless of demographics. It is to be noted that my Arab interviewees were more reluctant to talk about states and maps and border lines. They were cautious in dealing with the dominant Israeli discourse. Palestinians from Jerusalem know intuitively that the peace movement within Israel will allow a discourse for peace within its comfort zones and not in absolute human rights measures. The Palestinians in Nazareth know that a two-state solution may make them a target of ethnic cleansing from their homes within the 1967 borders of Israel. However, both parties tread cautiously as they stretch their hands towards their Israeli partners, partners who have a state, strong institutions, strong military and strong Western support, symbolic, moral and otherwise. This is not to imply that we can paint all Israeli activists with the same brush, nor can we do that with the Palestinian activists. Lastly, Ilan Pappé, the only Israeli activist among the people I interviewed who advocates a one-state solution, has left the country to live in Britain since I met him for the interview. As for the Palestinian Jerusalemite Amneh Badran, she also left for Britain – to do a doctorate on South African apartheid – in the hope of returning to resume the fight for Palestinian rights in a more historically and comparatively informed manner. The rest are still there, doing the job they want to

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do most, fighting for equality and human rights. Shulamit Aloni published a book meanwhile on Israel being an ‘ethnocratic’ rather than a ‘democratic’ state. As for Mahmoud Darwish, whose poetry accompanied us through this book, he died an untimely death in a hospital in Houston in August 2008. In his last poem he describes a situation where he and his ‘enemy’ fall into a hole. There is one way to leave that hole: to reconcile and collaborate together to get out. As I was getting this book ready to be sent to a publisher, I read the news that the Israeli Knesset passed a bill which allows the state of Israel to withdraw citizenship from individuals whom the state deems disloyal. One cannot but wonder about the intentions and the implications of the law. Does that put at risk the citizenship of Palestinians inside Israel, whose loyalty to the state has been always questioned? While reading about this new law, images of my interview with the Israeli Jewish activist, Uri Avnery, came alive. Avnery surprised me in my interview with him, by commenting to me that I simply don’t know how lucky I am today, as my family (along with everyone in Nazareth) was so close to being expelled in 1948. In fact, the Jewish army which entered Nazareth had orders from Ben-Gurion to expel the people of Nazareth. The army general in charge felt compassion towards the people and delayed the expulsion until it became too late to execute it. The story brought tears to my eyes, as I suddenly realized how dear one’s home is, and what it means to be forced to leave home and become a refugee. At the same time the story gave me hope because it is a story of human compassion which has no bounds or limits.

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APPENDIX THE ORGANIZATIONS THE ACTIVISTS WOR K IN

Adala (Justice). This is a legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel. It is affiliated with the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network. Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA). Founded in 1989 in Nazareth, it works for the advancement of the rights of Palestinian citizens inside Israel, is a member of the Mediterranean Human Rights Network and works with the EU to raise awareness with regard to the cultural rights of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Bat Shalom. Founded in 1993, this is ‘an Israeli national feminist grassroots organization of Jewish and Palestinian Israeli women working together for a genuine peace, grounded in a just resolution of the IsraeliPalestine conflict, respect for human rights, and an equal voice for Jewish and Arab women within Israeli society’ (www.batshalom.org). B’Tselem (‘In the image of,’ Genesis 1:27). Founded in 1989 by a number of public figures, this is the Israeli information center for human rights in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It aims at educating the Israeli public on human rights abuses in the occupied territories. Coalition of Women for a Just Peace. Founded in 2000, this organization brings together nine Israeli women’s peace organizations.

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They call for the end of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Fida (Palestinian Democratic Union). Founded in 1990 after it split from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It supports a two-state solution and a democratic socialist Palestinian state. Givaat Habiba. Founded in 1949, this is a center for peace education and for promoting understanding among Israel’s different ethnic groups. Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc). Founded in 1993 by Uri Avnery after he became disappointed with Peace Now. The movement calls for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. The Jerusalem Center for Women. Founded in 1994 after several meetings with EU representatives in Brussels, its objective is to promote peace, dialogue, democracy and transparency, as well as to promote and advance Palestinian women’s rights within the Palestinian Authority. It cooperates with the Israeli Bat Shalom under the umbrella of the Jerusalem Link. The Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayyemet). Founded in 1901 to claim land from its Arab owners. Today it works towards resolving environmental and water problems which face the state of Israel. Keshet (Rainbow). A US Jewish organization founded in order to defend the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Jews. Machsom Watch. Founded in 2001 by a group of Israeli women in order to monitor human rights abuses of Palestinians going through Israeli checkpoints, it claims membership of about 400 women, of all political convictions. Musawa (equality). Founded in 2002 by lawyers, human rights activists and former judges to safeguard the independence of the Palestinian judicial system in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from other governmental bodies. The Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA). Founded in 1987 by Mahdi Abd Al-Hadi. Its

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purpose is ‘to present the Palestinian question in its national, Arab and international contexts through academic research, dialogue and publication’ (www.passia.org – ‘About Us’). Peace Now (Shalom Achshav). Founded by reserve and serving officers in the wake of Anwar Sadat’s visit to Israel. Its purpose is to engage the Israeli government in seeking peace with its neighbors, as well as raising public awareness with regard to the Palestinian issue. Tufula Center. Founded in 1989 in Nazareth by Nabila Espanioly, this is a multipurpose center for the advancement of women and children. It also works for greater equality for Arab women inside Israel and for ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Women in Black. Founded in 1988. The founders decided to silently gather in city squares in Israel every Friday at noon, dressed in black, to protest the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since then, they have inspired women in many places of the world to adopt this form of action in opposition to war. Yesh-Din (There is law). Founded in 2005 by Shulamit Aloni and other public figures, it ‘is comprised of volunteers who have organized to oppose the continuing violation of Palestinian human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory’ (www.yesh-din.org - ‘About Us’).

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INDEX

Abbas, Mahmoud (Abu Mazin), 197 Abd Al-Hadi, Mahdi, 31, 32, 35 feminism or nationalism, 153, 179–183 Israel/Palestine as a space, 88–90, 106 peace, 113, 128–130 resolution, 199–202 Abdo, Nahla, 141–142, 147–148 Allon, Yigal, 20 Aloni, Shulmit, 31, 32, 219 feminism or nationalism, 144–145, 153, 156–159 Israel/Palestine as a space, 76–80, 105 peace, 113, 126–128 resolution, 197–199 Arafat, Yasser, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 32, 62, 88, 105, 123, 124, 149 Avnery, Uri, 31, 32, 219 feminism or nationalism, 168–169 Israel/Palestine as a space, 81–82, 105 peace, 113, 119–121 resolution, 189, 190–193 Badran, Amneh, 31, 32, 35, 218 feminism or nationalism, 183–184 Israel/Palestine as a space, 68–71, 103–104 peace, 113, 119 resolution, 195–197 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 56, 62, 215

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Balfour Declaration, 11, 12, 13 Barak, Ehud, 21, 24, 62, 213 Bat Shalom, 32, 34, 68, 75, 221 Beauvoir, Simone de, 50, 140 Black September, 19, 52 Camp David Agreement, 19, 20, 24 Camp David Talks, 62 Chazan, Naomi, 31, 32–33 feminism or nationalism, 153, 159–163 Israel/Palestine as a space, 80–81, 105 peace, 113, 121 resolution, 202–203 Clinton, Bill, 24, 58, 132, 203 Darwish, Mahmoud, 1, 17, 49–50, 55, 99, 110, 151, 219 Dayan, Yael, 31, 33, 35 feminism or nationalism, 163–165 Israel/Palestine as a space, 82–83 peace, 113, 124–126 terrorism, 113, 131–133 Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 33, 222 Dialogism, 56, 60, 80 Dialogue, 5, 6, 30, 33, 34, 36, 40, 57, 59, 61, 77–78, 96, 135, 144, 165, 170, 181, 194, 215 Discourse, 44–47 Draft Document of Principles of Women’s Rights 1994, 153

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236

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AND

IDENTITY

IN THE

Elon, Benny, 76–79 Eshkol, Levy, 76–79 Espanioly, Nabila, 31, 33 feminism or nationalism, 171–176 Israel/Palestine as a space, 90–91, 109 peace, 113, 116–117 resolution, 209–213 Fatah, 19, 25, 31, 41, 198, 208 Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc), 32, 38, 53, 80, 163, 168, 188, 192, 213, 222 Hamas, 23, 24, 25, 31, 41, 53, 132, 133, 189, 208 Herzl, Theodore, 11 Hussein–McMahon correspondence, 11–12 Identity, 49–55 Intifada, feminine, 62 First, 5, 7, 8, 20, 22, 23, 31, 68, 69, 70, 73, 74, 91, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 107, 110, 111, 141, 145, 147, 180, 181 Second (Al-Aqsa), 21, 24, 25, 39, 40, 53, 62, 75, 149 Jerusalem Center, 32, 40, 68, 118, 183, 222 Jerusalem Link, 32, 33, 68, 149, 222 Kamal, Zahira, 14, 31, 33 feminism or nationalism, 143, 178–179 Israel/Palestine as a space, 84–88, 106, 109 peace, 115–116 Khouri, Samira, 31, 33–34 feminism or nationalism, 153, 176–177

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Israel/Palestine as a space, 91–99 peace, 113, 114–115 resolution, 207–209 terrorism, 113, 134–135 Kliachko, Sara, 39 Machsom Watch, 29, 36, 37, 38, 222 Madrid Conference, 22, 23 Madrid Talks, 22, 23, 33, 188 Maoz, Ifat, 61 Meir, Golda, 76–79, 105 Meretz, 32, 33, 76 Nakba, 15, 16, 36, 52, 53, 62, 85, 87, 126, 141, 182, 185, 209, 211, 212 Orientalist, Orientalism, 62–64 Oslo Accords, 20, 21, 22, 23, 32, 33, 80, 82, 105, 107, 111, 122, 131, 132, 149, 205, 206 Palestinian Authority, 23, 25, 33, 41, 84, 149, 178, 149 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 19, 22, 23, 52, 101, 123, 124, 141, 142, 147, 181, 182, 189, 196 Pappé, Ilan, 8, 31, 34, 218 feminism or nationalism, 153, 169–171 Israel/Palestine as a space, 83, 105–106, 109 peace, 113, 117–119 resolution, 193–195 Perspectivity, 55–64 Plan Dalet, 17 Rabin, Yitzhak, 21, 22, 24, 32, 33, 82, 131, 133, 156, 159 Refugees, 15, 16, 23, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 123, 125, 130, 181, 205, 207, 208, 210, 212, 213, 214, 219

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INDEX

Revolt 1936–39, 2, 92, 93, 107, 141 Rhodes Agreement, 15, 20, 104 Said, Edward, 23, 26, 50, 59, 63, 159 Settlements, 20–22, 23, 24, 41, 102, 123, 128, 208, 204 Settlers, 16, 21, 41, 127, 128, 147, 148, 162 Sharon, Ariel, 21, 24–25, 31, 41, 199, 200 Sharoni, Simona, 144, 148 Svirsky, Gila, 31, 34, feminism or nationalism, 153, 165–168 Israel/Palestine as a space, 71–76, 104–105 peace, 113, 122–124 resolution, 203–205 Sykes-Picot Agreement, 11–13 UN Resolution 181 (Partition Plan), 14, 92, 107, 206, 207 UN Resolution 194, 15, 206, 208 UN Resolution 242, 18, 22, 207 UN Resolution 338, 19 Voice, 59–62

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237

Women in Black, 34, 38, 39–40, 71, 73, 74, 75, 104, 122, 144, 147, 163, 164, 165, 223 War, World War I, 5, 9, 11, 26, 157 World War II, 14, 91, 158 1948 (see Nakba) 1956 (The Suez Crisis), 18 1967 (The Six Day War), 18 1982 (The Lebanon War), 19, 107, 111 Wye Agreement, 24 Yuval-Davis, Niram, 147–148, 155 Zaidan, Mohammad, 31, 34 feminism or nationalism, 153, 177–178 Israel/Palestine as a space, 99–103, 107, 109 peace, 113, 130–131 resolution, 205–207 Zionism, 9, 11, 14, 17, 20, 26, 62, 71, 196, 199, 200, 202, 203 Zionist, 10, 11, 13, 14, 20, 34, 54, 62, 71, 77, 104, 147, 197, 199, 203, 209, 212 Labor Zionism, 20, 200 Likud, 20, 21, 24, 25, 77

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